Avnet Technology Solutions has announced an expansion of its existing partnership with storage giant that will see it add storage gear from EMC’s RSA Security division to its linecard across Canada and the U.S.

Under the new deal, Avnet will handle RSA’s security, risk and compliance solutions for its resellers across North America, fitting those products into its SecurePath education and engagement program.

“As we know, security is the number-one concern of CIOs, and when we look at our SolutionsPath practices, RSA really helps round out that solution stack,” said Cheryl Neal, vice president of marketing for the technology infrastructure solutions group at Avnet Technology Solutions.

Avnet already carriers a number of security vendors’ offerings under its SecurePath practice, but Neal said that adding RSA’s wares to the mix will prove complementary to the products and programs it already has in place, particularly as many organizations look to beef up security at the data centre level due to the prevalence of industry megatrends mobility, virtualization and the cloud.

Neal said that like any supplier with which Avnet deals, the distributor will work out a game plan based on the combined vendor/distributor value proposition to the channel, and to that channel’s own value proposition with RSA products to the end user. She described RSA as “a great fit” into SecurePath, and said the distributor is already working to bring it into the practice, including getting RSA products into its “playbooks” for channel partners, creating joint plays with complementary products already on the Avnet linecard, and getting RSA gear up and running in the distributor’s virtual demonstration centre.

The distributor will be focused both on recruiting new partners to the RSA fold and engaging with existing Avnet customers who have been purchasing RSA gear from other disties. In the latter group, the goal is to woo them with the familiar confines of SolutionsPath and Avnet’s high-touch “solutions distribution” focus. By extending SecurePath to include RSA, Neal said the distributor will be able to bring current Avnet partners that already offer RSA to the fold.

The distributor will also seek to sign on new partners to the vendor, particularly those for whom RSA’s parent company is a familiar face.

“Our current storage partners selling EMC might want to add RSA to their linecard, and we’ll help them get there and make that transition easy by working on them on business planning over the next six months.”