Avnet To Play Budapest Via iPlanet

As the Republic of Hungary works to establish itself in a post-cold-war era, some Western high tech companies are looking to help develop the local IT community.

Tempe, Ariz.-based Avnet Computer’s Marketing, Hall-Mark Division Friday says it signed a distribution deal with Santa Clara, Calif.-based iPlanet, the Internet collaboration platform from Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) and Netscape (Nasdaq: AOL) to help out Hungarian developers and resellers.

Avnet says tapping into iPlanet is a boost for the many small- to medium-sized companies in Budapest (Hungary’s capital) with their Internet services.

The objective of the partnership is to let joint Avnet and iPlanet customers add a full range of e-business solutions to their offerings.

“We are pleased to be offering our Hungarian reseller partners iPlanet’s well-regarded products,” says Avnet general manager Janos Kurel. “Our Hungarian sales team is being trained to leverage iPlanet’s products and will work closely with iPlanet to assist our customers to deploy their e-business solutions.”

Kurel says the new partnership is a natural extension of the November agreement signed between Sun and Avnet.