INTErVIEW
East of Avnet
Janos Kurel has just been appointed Vice
president of Sales for the CEMaaS region
(Central Europe, Middle East, africa, austria
and Switzerland) at avnet Technology
Solutions. He will have commercial
by John Garratt
responsibility for seven countries of the
john.garratt@iteuropa.com
region: austria, Czech republic, Hungary,
poland, romania, Slovak republic and
Switzerland. Luckily he knows the region well
- he joined avnet in 1998 after having worked
for IBM in central and eastern Europe in a
at first sight, this looks like you are
ITE
in charge of a mixture of countries,
variety of management roles.....
some with mature IT supply industries, others
emerging?
opportunity and where the knowledge gap is
We restructured geographically a year biggest. We’re certainly not planning to shrink any
JK
ago, with the goal of keeping our local of our lines.
relationships through local sales teams. We did it
this way after looking at how our different vendors
ITE
and the level of competition for you?
were split. We have to respect national differences,
keeping our business running while working locally As well as facing the main competition -
with sensitivity and empathy.
JK
broadliners in every country, though not
always at the same level and with a minimum of
What are the differences in IT supply one in each of our countries except Romania, we
ITE
between the established and the face a large number of smaller players. However,
emerging markets? I can see that after a few more years, distribution
will be very consolidated, just like the US market.
The new EU members and emerging But the smaller companies will become more
JK
countries have a GDP growing at around specialised and there is always the opportunity for
three times the rate of the others. This triggers IT niches in distribution.
growth in turn. Our plans involve all the countries
though. Over the last few years distribution
ITE
Is credit becoming more of an issue?
margins have fallen or are flat, so to increase
profitability we have to focus on solutions. We’re Credit is really not a problem if we
JK
having a lot of internal discussions now on this. get the chance to talk to everyone in
time. We can find solutions for issues of credit,
ITE
What sort of solutions? of markets and looking for opportunities. But it depending on the local situation. We work with
is also about education, working with vendors, partners and customers and can sort it out in
We’re looking at virtualisation and including local vendors. Keeping partners in sync almost every situation. www.avnet.com
JK
mobility as technology areas, but also with vendors, and with a message of best practice
OUr aNaLYSIS
looking at the markets - we believe that there is drawn from the rest of Europe and the US.
a big potential with government. But this is being aTS has already been moving on the technology
evaluated and even if we set up a big centre, we
ITE
Is your product mix right? front with new resources for Vars selling
will still act locally. virtualisation elsewhere in Europe as well as
As Avnet Technology Solutions we setting up VMware authorised Training centres,
JK
and growth through acquisitions as have most of the right products. My and recently launching a dedicated government
ITE
well as organic? role is to help represent the available products in market training programme. Having been at the
other countries, keeping what we have, building heart of avnet in Europe for so long, it sounds
We’ve made around 50 acquisitions around solutions, servers and software. Where like Janos Kurel will have no problems delivering
JK
in 10 years; it’s a constant evaluation GDP is growing, we grow faster - this is the biggest these ideas to his markets.
18 apr 2008 17
It0807 - 17_avnet.indd 15 2008-04-16 10:58
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