Avnet (NYSE:AVT), a leading global technology distributor, unveiled its first Design Center of Excellence in the Americas during a grand opening ceremony at the facility in San Jose, Calif. last week. The Design Center of Excellence is focused on design, engineering and on-boarding new products, underscoring Avnet’s commitment to helping customers bring new products to market anywhere in the world.

The Design Center of Excellence brings Avnet expertise directly to its customers and will help drive innovation among original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) in support of their integrated and data center solutions. Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the new facility will bring Avnet closer to customers and many of the large technology suppliers that are critical to the supply chain. Additionally, customers will have the opportunity to nurture new ideas and build prototypes in a controlled environment before transitioning to Avnet’s global manufacturing environment.

“Through the San Jose Design Center of Excellence, we are better positioned to help our customers bring world-class solutions to market even faster,” said Scott MacDonald, vice president of global integrated solutions at Avnet. “Avnet offers full end-to-end capabilities to support customers at any stage of the product lifecycle including design, engineering, manufacturing, distribution, and after-market services. The new design center strengthens our manufacturing scope and scale to bring customers’ products to life.”

The grand opening celebration included tours of the 8,200-square foot facility, showcasing Avnet’s end-to-end design capabilities. The Design Center of Excellence features an executive briefing center, a capabilities showcase, a New Product Introduction and Engineering Lab, product warehousing and a state-of-the-art programming center. Attendees included customers, partners and key suppliers from companies such as Intel, Dell, Kontron, Microsoft, and Supermicro.

In addition to remarks from Avnet executives, Intel’s Dhiraj Mallick, vice president of the Data Center Group and general manager of the Innovation, Pathfinding and Architecture Group, discussed the future of the data center.

“The new Design Center of Excellence will give Avnet customers access to the resources they need to drive product development in one place,” said Mallick. “Avnet’s continued emphasis and investment in design support will positively impact data center, IoT and other advancing technologies. Intel is proud to have our technology driving many customer and platform demos in the showcase featuring our Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors, Intel® Omni-Path HPC Fabric and Intel® Optane™ technology.”

Avnet operates 10 design and manufacturing Centers of Excellence across the globe, currently supporting more than 830 customers that have products going through the integration centers annually.