Cisco-only distributor launches in Australia

Multinational Westcon Group has brought its Comstor distribution brand to Australia, specifically for its Cisco channel.

The distributor announced that its Cisco channel would be entirely shifted to the Comstor banner, with 40 staff dedicated to the unit. The Westcon brand would continue to deal with the security, unified communications and data centre businesses.

Cisco Australia partner business group director Jason Brouwers said that the birth of Comstor would not impact the vendor's relationships with its other local distributors.

"We'll continue to have our relationships with the other distributors. But the focus that Westcon has with Comstor is fantastic for us because we've now got a distributor that is focusing 100 percent on Cisco," he said.

"It's not so much about the other distributors, but what [Comstor and Cisco] are doing."

Existing Cisco reseller contracts would "remain unchanged", according to the distributor, and those partners would "continue to use the [existing] ecommerce site".

Westcon Group ANZ managing director Dave Rosenberg said that he is currently recruiting for an executive to head up Comstor in Australia, and the unit already boasts 12 technical staff on its books.

Comstor was originally a Washington DC distributor that was acquired by Westcon from GE Capital IT in 1999. At the time of the transaction, Westcon did not have a relationship with Cisco. The Comstor brand has operated internationally since then, with Australia the final Westcon territory that it has arrived in.

With the local launch of Comstor, the wider company has itself re-branded as Westcon-Comstor.

The distributor hosted sixty Cisco partners at an invitation-only party at Ivy Penthouse nightclub in Sydney on Thursday to launch Comstor locally. Cisco worldwide distribution sales vice president Julie Hens and Westcon Group global chief executive Dolph Westerbos were among the international luminaries that flew in for the occasion.

"To consolidate its Cisco distribution operations in Australia under the Comstor brand creates a stronger single entity that aligns resources and expertise around Cisco solutions and opens up even more opportunities for our partners," said Hens.

According to Westcon-Comstor, the dedicated Cisco unit would allow partners to take advantage of a global alignment in "solutions programs" and "value-added Cisco and Comstor services", and this would result in "improved partner enablement and go-to-market support".

Westerbos said that Comstor is "well established globally as a dedicated Cisco business unit".

"Therefore, it makes sense to now also unite Cisco's products under the Comstor brand in Australia and New Zealand to make it easier for solution providers to buy and sell Cisco."