Avnet Inc. Ranks 13th in eWeek FastTrack 500.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 18, 2000

Lauded as a top e-business innovator, Avnet Inc. ranked 13th in eWeek magazine's FastTrack 500 list for 2000.

In compiling its list, eWeek rewards companies for having deployed e-business technologies like customer relationship management applications, significant e-commerce applications, Internet-enabled data warehouses and high-speed networking.

"Companies that wed solid business practices with innovative information technology strategies are the companies at the fore in today's Internet-enabled new economy," said Tony DeLuca, senior vice president of global operations and corporate CIO for Avnet Inc.

"Avnet uses its expertise in both areas to enhance customers' and suppliers' product development, manufacturing, supply-chain management and customer service needs."

As Avnet has expanded around the world, it has pursued a three-pronged strategy in establishing its e-business and information technology leadership.

First, Avnet is Web-enabling its own enterprise. Built on a global infrastructure that includes a wide area network, a Global Data Warehouse and the creation of a single, global, multi-currency, multi-lingual IT platform, Avnet is automating its processes front to back. Intranet and extranet connections facilitate the flow of vital information internally and externally, with its customers and suppliers.

Second, Avnet is creating new business models via the Internet which leverage the medium's advantages. And finally, Avnet is creating strategic alliances with and/or taking equity positions in complementary enterprises within the Internet sphere.

For example, Avnet has a strategic relationship with ChinaECNet, an online marketplace that will be the sole gateway into China for high tech components.

"While the Internet is not the reason companies will be doing business today and in the future, it is the way they'll be doing business," DeLuca said. "Investing in IT for a distributor is like investing in R&D as a manufacturer -- it's imperative."

The FastTrack analysis is performed with Harte-Hanks Market Intelligence of La Jolla, Calif., which maintains an extensive database of technologies deployed at some 260,000 data centers and other corporate IT sites. The top 50 companies' Web presence is then reexamined with a second partner, Gartner Group Inc. of Stamford, Conn.

Business-to-business and business-to-consumer sites of each company are scored using Gartner's proprietary Web Evaluation Tool. Using scores from the second process, the top 50 companies were reranked to come up with the final list.

eWeek is a publication of Ziff Davis Media, a wholly owned subsidiary of CNET Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: CNET), San Francisco.

Phoenix-based Avnet Inc. (NYSE: AVT), a Fortune 500 company with annual sales exceeding $10 billion, is one of the world's largest distributors of semiconductors, interconnect, passive, and electromechanical components and computer products from leading manufacturers.

Serving customers in 63 countries, Avnet markets, inventories, and adds value to these products and provides world-class supply-chain management and engineering design services. The company's Web site is located at http://www.avnet.com.