Avnet has announced the promotion of Lou Lutostanski to the role of Vice President of Internet of Things (IoT), effective immediately. Lutostanski will report directly to Pete Bartolotta, Chief Transformation Officer for Avnet. In his new role, Lutostanski will strengthen Avnet’s IoT strategy and further their reach to makers, entrepreneurs, startups and other IoT innovators, enabling them to bring their IoT solutions to market, from idea to production.
Lutostanski joined Avnet nearly 30 years ago as a system Sales Manager. During the next 13 years, he gained increasing responsibility as a Field Applications Engineer, Sales Manager, Branch Manager, Vice President and also Area Director. He later joined Motorola where he served as Vice President of global sales for the HP account, then the Motorola account, and on to Vice President of sales and marketing for the Americas. Since his return to Avnet in 2013, Lutostanski has served as Vice President of electronic component sales for the Americas and Vice President of demand creation for the Americas. He graduated from Purdue University with a bachelor of science in electrical engineering and an MBA from Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville.
Lutostanski’s appointment marks Avnet’s latest move to drive the future of IoT. They continue to implement a robust strategy to fully capitalize on the high-growth potential of IoT. According to a recent McKinsey report, IoT has a potential economic impact of up to $ 11.1 trillion a year by 2025. IDC predicts that IoT will be comprised of nearly 30 billion connected devices by 2020, four times the global population.
Implying to the very concept of empowering IoT, in October 2016, Avnet completed its acquisition of Premier Farnell’s element 14 community, a digital platform that includes 430,000 members in 36 countries. One month later, in November 2016, they acquired Hackster.io – an online community that helps users across the globe learn how to design, create and program Internet-connected hardware. These efforts and others have expanded Avnet’s reach to include large, new audiences of engineers, innovators and entrepreneurs. In addition, Avnet continues to partner with companies like AT&T and IBM to maximize its development of IoT solutions.
Speaking on the eve of his appointment, Lutostanski commented that, Avnet is in the driver’s seat of the Internet of Things and as one of the world’s largest technology distributors, they are in a unique position to overcome issues of scale and time-to-market pressures faced by their customers. According to him, Avnet will now invest in reference designs and high ROI integrated solutions across the device, gateway, network and cloud which take IoT to the next level. He looks forward to new role, and is committed to support Avnet’s customers through every stage of the IoT product lifecycle.
