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Avnet, a distributor of electronic components, computer products and embedded technology made waves in the European channel this week, announcing its intention to purchase data center solutions and services distributor Magirus Group and AltronGmbH & Co.

No figures were released on the acquisition but in both cases fronting up the finances will provide the Fortune 500 company - which generated US$26.5bn in revenue last year – with a stronger footing in European and Middle Eastern markets.

Through Magirus Avent will have access to a large professional services portfolio in eleven markets in EMEA, and a long list of technology partners including Cisco, VMware and EMC.

Magirus has more than 400 business and technical professionals working within the data center community with 4,500 reseller, system integrator and IT service provider customers. Last year it generated about US$530m in revenue.

AltronGmBH & Co is an interconnect, passive and electromechanical components distributor headquartered in Germany that represents more than 40 suppliers which generated about US$30m in 2011.

Avnet said by acquiring Altron it will gain critical mass in Germany. Avnet already has its own interconnect, passive and electromechanical business with a strong presence in the country.

Avnet Technology Solutions EMEA President Graeme Watt said Magirus’ business will be integrated into Avnet Technology Solution’s EMEA business to help it grow in markets including France and Germany.

“Magirus is a high quality, focussed business and represents an excellent expansion to our current operations as it adds complementary product lines across the region while meaningfully increasing our scale in important markets including Germany and France,” Watt said.

“Magirus’ position with market-leading suppliers in high growth technologies will bolster our solutions practices and create significant cross-selling opportunities in the combined customer base. Its business model is a strong fit with our strategy to provide more value-add services.”

Just this year, Magirus was named as a channel partner for build-to-order Cisco Unified Computing Systems B-Series in Europe, a specialist distributor of Dell’s data center solutions in the UK for enterprise server, storage and connectivity and became the first distributor to make EMC’s VSPEX Proven Infrastructure available to the EMEA channel.

Avnet has also had some recent wins. In February it was named as the supplier of Cisco and NetApp’s FlexPod IT architecture that will run Microsoft’s private-cloud platform.