Bob Stegner, the senior vice president of marketing for Synnex in North America, said from a Canadian standpoint the new investment Synnex has made in acquiring Westcon-Comstor will provide solution providers north of the 49th parallel more of an international footprint than before.
The $600 million acquisition of Westcon-Comstor means that Synnex will be able to expand into 14 new countries. Stegner believes that for Canadian solution providers with customers who have business in Latin America and into Europe can now work with Synnex to fulfill those needs.
“With Westcon we are now international and this is very important because right now if you are a solution provider in Toronto or Regina you can serve customers with a global footprint. This is a big deal because it will keep the competition away from these customers,” he added.
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As of now everything stays the same, Stegner told CDN until the deal officially closes. The plan is to run the two organizations separately. When Westcon-Comstor becomes part of Synnex the big net new gain will be the Cisco business. However, Stegner said not to overlook vendors such as Palo Alto Networks, F5, and FireEye. What this deal also does is strengthen current vendor partnerships with CheckPoint Software, Symantec and Avaya.
“Westcon-Comstor is a great fit and I think now the market will see the strategic position CEO Kevin Murai put us on years ago. And, we stayed on that path. Westcon-Comstor is a natural fit because there is very little overlap with vendors. There is no doubt there will be some overlap of customers, but I do not have that knowledge right now. Beyond that it’s a great opportunity for both,” he said.
Westcon-Comstor areas of focus such as security and unified communications and collaboration will be welcome additions to Synnex’s network of solution providers. And, for Westcon-Comstor partners Synnex brings them all of the distributors’ cloud offerings.
“We are no longer a normal looking distributor and we’ll be going out and bringing in other opportunities and services,” Stegner said.