Company

An IT decision-making platform that puts the full power of innovation in your hands

The velocity of innovation in technology today is driving an equally rapid evolution of the IT marketplace. More and more, IT departments are relying on Trusted Advisors to help them manage change and plan for the future. Our mission is to build a platform that navigates the relentless pace of change for Trusted Advisors and their Enterprise customers, enabling business transformation. We power you forward.

Our Ecosystem

Enabling Trusted Advisors™

Trusted Advisors are a growing breed of IT professional services providers that act as an extension of an Enterprise’s IT staff. They add experience, expertise, and value to your IT projects. We have assembled a distribution ecosystem for Trusted Advisors to leverage including:

Market-leading service providers
Technology solutions
Tools
Resources

Learn more about Trusted Advisors™

Our Technology

Leading the Way with Pathfinder

Staying out in front of technology change is a full-time job. If you’re not laser-focused on the future you will miss opportunities to improve business outcomes. Pathfinder is our powerful IT decision-making application that combines our innovative tools, resources, and insights empowering the Trusted Advisor to assist their enterprise customers with IT planning, decision-making, and procurement.

Learn more about Pathfinder

Our DNA

Born in the Cloud

We were born 10 years ago at the beginning of the age of hyper-accelerating technology. A time before cheap bandwidth and impossibly fast processor speeds drove new cloud technology and the convergence of IT, voice, and connectivity into ubiquity.

Looking Forward

Our vision was and is still today to be the global leader in powering next-generation technology decisions. We built and proved our business model by being the distribution engine behind some of the largest Value Added Resellers (VARs) in the world selling telecom, cloud, and IT to their customers.

The Growing Need

Since then, the industry became more and more complex and the rate of change has increased. There’s never been more confusion in the marketplace. For this reason, the Trusted Advisor market grew with more and more IT organizations seeking the expertise of object third parties to help them make smart decisions.

Realizing Our Vision

Years of experience have generated volumes of institutional knowledge. Thousands of transactions each year have given us the foundation for a big data approach. Primary research has given us unique insights. We scaled our knowledge and research into an IT decision-making platform.

Ian Kieninger

CEO and Co-Founder

Ian serves on Comptia’s Telecom Advisory Council and is a cofounder of the Technology Channel Association (TCA), the indirect channel industry’s first trade association. Prior to AVANT, Ian oversaw various advance technology practices at CDW.

Drew Lydecker

President and Co-Founder

Prior to AVANT, Drew worked as a Voice & Data specialist at CDW. He played a key part in helping CDW become one of the largest telecommunications agents in the world as the number one specialist on the team.

Alex Danyluk

Chief Strategy Officer

Alex drives Avant’s corporate growth strategy, including leading our marketing, business development and partner program. He has 25+ years of experience in service provider, hosting and managed business services, with a diverse background including Sales, Marketing, Channel Development, Product Management and Engineering.

Ron Hayman

Chief Cloud Officer

Ron oversees AVANT’s cloud strategy, specifically building upon the company’s innovative technologies as well as our approach to providing best-in-class cloud solutions to our partners. He brings more than 15 years of experience in IT leadership.

Brendan Taylor

CFO

Brendan has more than 15 years of experience, holding various leadership positions in mid-market, B2B technology and professional services companies. Originally from London, England, Brendan joins AVANT from Chicago-based SaaS cloud technology business CVM Solutions, a Kroll Company, where he was responsible for rapidly scaling profits, and delivering predictable and repeatable earnings.

Jennifer Gallego

EVP of Channel Sales, West

Jen joined AVANT in 2009. She began her career at XO where she worked her way up from account executive to Director of Channel where her territory led the country in sales. In 2017, Jen was named to CRN's Women in the Channel.

Shane McNamara

EVP of Channel Sales, East

Shane leads Channel Sales for the East. McNamara brings a wealth of experience and insight to his leadership role at AVANT. McNamara previously served as the senior vice president of business services at Qology Direct. Before that, he was the channel partner vice president at XO Communications and the general manager for Carrier Sales at CDW.

Our Future

Join Our Growing Team

Our people and culture are two of the most valuable assets that we have as a company. We’ve grown by hiring the best and brightest in the industry. If you’re one of them, see if one of our open positions is a fit for you.

See Careers

Our Values

What We Stand For

Our people and culture are two of the most valuable assets that we have as a company. We’ve grown by hiring the best and brightest in the industry. If you’re one of them, see if one of our open positions is a fit for you.

Integrity – Build a foundation of trust through honesty.
Run our business with passion.
Take a stand for what is right, even when that is not the popular decision.
Strong morals, discipline, self-control, respect for others, always tell the truth.
Take responsibility for our actions.
Commitment – To our customers, our teams, our company.
Being accountable to our roles and AVANT’s goals.
Commitment to each other and our mutual success.
Being on time, responsive and prepared.

Positive attitude – Positivity is infectious and shows for those who truly want to be here.
We want people to want to be here, not need to be here.
Care truly about relationships with coworkers and customers.
Drive – Push us and our company to get better every day.
Always looking for ways to improve and exceed the expectations of our customers.
We don’t tolerate mediocrity and question the status quo.
We make things happen and think 10X.