Avcom Turns To The East
A
few months ago, we wrote http://www.wohl.com/wa03-34.htm
about how high-end Systems Integrator Avcom decided that it was time
to take their money and go out of business – sales were flat,
business was frustrating, and there was no sign anywhere of an
upturn.
But
on the east coast, Rob Wolfe, who had been running Avcom’s east
coast business, decided he could definitely make a go of it, by
being very lean and focused. He
had, in fact, been trying to buy his region out for some time and
ended up buying Avcom’s name, web site, and phone numbers, in an
effort to assure some consistency. He also purchased some of
Avcom’s business equipment and was one of five buyers of their
East of the Mississippi customer list.
Wolfe figures that in a relationship business like Avcom,
with some work he’ll get to keep most of those customers.
Renamed
Avcom East, the business is a curious mix of new and old.
On the one hand, most of the employees, like the customers,
are familiar. On the
other hand, the company is treated as a new business, so Wolfe had
to get recertified by each of its vendor partner. These include Sun,
Oracle, Veritas, Cisco, and StorageTech.
Wolfe
plans to beef up his software offerings.
He views hardware as a loss leader and a door opener.
“Sun get us in the door,” he says, “especially since we
don’t sell any other UNIX platforms or NT.”
But we’re just another reseller in the high-end hardware
market, hoping to also get the plumbing infrastructure sale.
That’s a tough sell, with as much as a one year sales
cycle.
We
asked Rob Wolfe if he intended to offer Linux and he replied that
Avcom East to get one of their techs Red Hat certified to hedge
their bets. If the
customers want Linux, they’ll want to be able to provide it.
Avcom
East will specialize in:
 |
Mid-market
organizations, especially in partnership with horizontal and
vertical specialty software and consulting firms vs. the big
consulting shops
|
|
Infrastructure
software (the “plumbing”), including some customization
and integration. For
example, they sell cluster agents for fail over when the
customer will be installing Siebel.
|
But
they don’t themselves sell applications or do application
integration; that’s for their partners.
They’re particular interested in partnering vertical
applications partners who specialize in areas like Patriot Act
Compliance and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
Wolfe
takes a realistic view of the today’s market.
He sees it as stagnant, even possibly deflationary, and
that’s scary. But
he’s confident that Avcom East is prepared to out-execute its
competition. “We’ve built the company to be nimbler, with a leaner
infrastructure and lots of outsourcing,” he explained, “and we
use part-timers where we can.”
He went on to note that while they expect positive cash flow
this year, they’re prepared to tough it out for much longer than
that.
He’d
call them “cautiously optimistic.”
We’d call them tough, market savvy, and ready to do
business.
(back to top)
