SYNNEX to acquire large chunks of Westcon-Comstor
2017-09-05
American distributor SYNNEX Corporation and South African group Datatec have unveiled a definitive agreement in which SYNNEX will acquire Datatec's Westcon-Comstor Americas business and become a minority shareholder in Datatec's Westcon EMEA and APAC businesses. "We believe this is a unique opportunity that is transformational to SYNNEX and is aligned to our strategy of positioning the business to where technology is growing. Westcon-Comstor is a recognized leader in the security, UCC and networking space", stated Kevin Murai, President and CEO of SYNNEX Corp. "The Westcon-Comstor brand has been built over time by a very deep and talented team and we are excited to welcome the Americas team to our family."
Jens Montanana, CEO of Datatec, stated: "I'm proud of our team and the business they have built over the past thirty years. The SYNNEX culture is similar to Westcon-Comstor and I'm excited about the opportunity to grow our businesses together on a global scale. We share a common vision and strategic objective in addressing the global complexities and emerging demands facing our partners."
Here are the transaction details and the impact of the acquisition to Consolidated SYNNEX Corporation Financials:
"We are pleased to welcome a long-term shareholder like Datatec Ltd. The ownership structure serves us well as it aligns our collective long-term goals", stated Kevin Murai, President and CEO of SYNNEX Corp. "The composition of this transformative acquisition enables SYNNEX to further invest in long-term strategies to grow and diversify our business. Mr. Montanana brings to our board deep practical knowledge in doing business beyond North America."
For its fiscal year end ended February 28, 2017, the Westcon Americas business generated approximately €2B of revenue and approximately €82m in EBITDA. In the first 12 months after close, the Westcon Americas business, excluding integration costs, transaction expenses and intangible amortization, is expected to be mildly accretive to SYNNEX Non-GAAP EPS and then accelerate in year two. The transaction is expected to close in the third calendar quarter of 2017, subject to the satisfaction of regulatory requirements and customary closing conditions. Until the transaction is completed, the companies will continue to operate independently.
Kindermann, ENO, VIDEOR, Westcon: some news from German distributors
2016-03-01
Germany: AV specialist Kindermann has expanded its portfolio with Ctouch LFD touchscreens, from Dutch vendor and distributor Sahara. On its side, telephony specialist ENO Telecom has added O2 business offers to its catalog. Swiss digital signage vendor SpinetiX has decided to complement its presence in the country with the appointment of AV and security VAD VIDEOR. Finally, VAD Westcon has opened a new warehouse in Houten, the Netherlands, in order to address more efficiently and rapidly the needs of its resellers in Central Europe, including Germany. The new warehouse, which, with 8000 sqm, is 60% larger than the previous one, also offers integration services for its UC&C, Comstor and Security customers in the region (source: Telecom Handel and IT Business).
Comstor reviews its portfolio
2016-02-19
France: Cisco VAD Comstor has operated some changes to its offer. The company has stopped distribution of Emulex storage and network controllers, Plantronics headsets, UCi2i UCaaS offer, Ucopia wireless infrastructure products and X-IO storage servers. In the same time, it has expanded its portfolio with Avizia and Imagicle collaborative tools. All these products are part of its Cisco ecosystem.
Comstor scheme seeks to entice resellers to Cisco security
2016-01-18
Cisco VAD Comstor has made a bid to boost the awareness of Cisco's security portfolio and encourage partners to embrace these offerings, with its Prove the Future initiative.
The scheme sees the availability of a free trial of Cisco's ASA with FirePOWER for partners which will be used to scan customers' networks to spot malicious traffic, and "ultimately help upsell more Cisco security", a company statement said. Comstor is also adding 20 sales and system engineers to support the scheme and will provide training and help with installation. According to Jeremy Butt, EMEA senior vice president of Comstor owner Westcon Group, the scheme is designed to reach out to more partners with Cisco's security offering.
"The benefit is that it raises the awareness of [resellers] who may not have been aware of the full security portfolio that comes from Cisco, and hopefully they will go further with it, try the programme and use the resources and capability," he said. "And for those who may have been aware of it and had maybe put their toe in it, to maybe get their whole feet in the water. I think with the additional capability and resources we have, we are able to support people taking those steps."
The scheme has been rolled out in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom and will target between 1,000 and 1,250 resellers. The distributor hopes to get about half of these total partners on board with the scheme.
Butt said the initiative was in reaction to customer confusion in the security market, adding that it aims to drive confidence into resellers when selling Cisco security products.
"I do feel quite strongly about the hand-holding part of the process," he said. "Those initial experiences with any new vendor or technology, I feel it's very important that everyone gets a good taste and a satisfying taste from their first experience."
The launch of Prove the Future from Comstor is in conjunction with Cisco's new Advanced Security Accreditation programme for distributors. This will see Cisco increasing its rebates from five to eight per cent for disties who invest in more security resources (source: Channelnomics Europe).
Westcon opens up about Romanian outsourcing move
2015-11-25
Distributor Westcon has revealed a business process outsourcing (BPO) firm with operations in Romania will take charge of some of its EMEA finance and operations functions. Parent company Datatec announced yesterday that 300 of Westcon's 1,900 EMEA staff would be affected by a "BPO transformation" of its EMEA operations.
Westcon senior vice president David Grant revealed a phased migration of the functions in question will occur between now and mid-2017 and insisted service levels for resellers would not be affected. Although Grant was not in a position to divulge Westcon's BPO partner, he described it as a global outfit "in the top-right of the Gartner Magic Quadrant". "We separated our activities into those we see as transactional and those that add value to the customers and vendors," he said. "Anything that is very transactional we have decided to outsource to another organisation as it gives us scale and efficiency."
The outsourcing project will run alongside Westcon's impending European implementation of a global SAP project, Grant said, adding that affected employees may be offered other roles in the organisation. "It is not a case of everything changing on day one," he said. "Where roles are affected we will give people significant advance notice, as it's the responsible thing to do. We are growing, and while some transactional roles will be eliminated from the business, some new opportunities will be created so we will take as much time as we can to retrain and redeploy staff where it is appropriate to us."
Westcon, which operates through the Comstor and Westcon brands, has order-processing staff in 42 countries in EMEA, Grant said, adding that any staff whose roles are displaced will be offered the choice of staying on to help with the migration. Employee and other fees associated with the migration will cost parent Datatec about €11.5m in its current financial year.
Rival distributor Ingram Micro centralised more EMEA back-office functions to Sofia in Bulgaria last year.
Grant said it made more sense for Cisco, Avaya, Polycom, Juniper and Check Point partner Westcon to partner with a BPO outfit with knowledge of the region. "We have chosen an organisation where it is their core business to provide business processes and support," he said. "We are not experts in sourcing a facility or finding local language specialists and training them on what we do."
Romania, which is where the BPO firm in question will carry out Westcon's transactional work, was ranked fourth in an index of the top global BPO locations this year carried out by Cushman & Wakefield, behind Vietnam, the Philippines and Bulgaria. Grant emphasised that Westcon's "core value-add" will be retained in-house and claimed that neither customer service levels nor its ability to execute would be affected by the move. "Our top 10 vendor partners have all offered to make sure there is good knowledge transfer and are helping to train our BPO staff," he said. "If you think about it, most of our major vendors have some part of their organisation that is outsourced so are completely familiar with what support they can give us."
Graeme Watt, EMEA president at rival distributor Avnet Technology Solutions, confirmed his company has also made some steps towards centralising transactional functions, "but nothing like on the scale we are seeing with Westcon". "It is fair to say that everybody is looking to see how much of that non-technical, more run-rate, transactional operations they can centralise," he said. "We have been talking about it for a while and we will centralise functions and operations where we think it makes sense and keep things local where we think it makes sense." (source: Channelweb United Kingdom).
Our directory is updated daily through information sent by vendors and distributors. Here are the latest updates :
Luckystar Computers (I) Pvt Ltd
India - Specialist
Netsafe Solutions Hravtska d.o.o.
Croatia - VAD
Netsafe Solutions Bulgaria e.o.o.d.
Bulgaria - VAD
Netsafe Solutions Srl
Romania - VAD
Arrow ECS Slovakia s r.o.
Slovakia - VAD
Share Distribuzione Srl
Italy - VAD
Ignition Technology Sub-Saharan Africa
South Africa - VAD
Ignition Technology ME
United Arab Emirates - VAD
Ignition Technology France
France - VAD
Kosmotech (KSM YuA TOV)
Ukraine - Specialist
Comstor France
14, rue Sarah-Bernardt - CS 50013
FR-92665 Asnières-sur-Seine cedex
France
Phone : +33-172284000
Fax : +33-172284025
Website : http://fr.comstor.com
General manager :
Mr Didier Trzaska
CFO :
Mr Paul Gaillard
Sales director :
Mr Emmanuel Kapferer
Marketing director :
Mrs Seray Kulaksiz
Product manager :
Mr Gilles Miard
Product manager :
Mr Benjamin Allard
Creation year : 2006
Siret : 492 952 478 00013
VAT number : FR 05 492 952 478
Annual turnover
2011 : 100,00 M€
Active resellers : 1000
Indirect turnover : 100%
National/regional/export split : 40/60/0
VAD : Networks and telecoms, security
Main brands : APC by Schneider Electric, Avizia, Cisco, HPE (Simplivity), Panduit
Clients : Broadline e-commerce, broadliner, buying groups, consumer electronics, dealers, IT consulting, system integrators and VARs, marketplaces, phone shops, service providers, specialist, specialized and corporate resellers, telecom operators, trader, xSP
Employees : 120 people
Accessories and connectivity
Cabling and connectivity
Cisco, Cisco (Meraki), Panduit
Hardware test products
Cisco, Cisco (Cognio)
Infrastructure accessories, bays and racks
Cisco, Panduit
AV
AV accessories
Cisco
Large-format display
Cisco
Personal and home audio
Cisco
Professional AV hardware
Cisco
Computers and peripherals
Adapters and controllers
Cisco
Servers
Cisco, HPE (Simplivity)
Thin computing
Cisco, VMware
Computing components
Memory
Cisco
Industrial computing
Industrial computing hardware
RealWear
Mobility
Fixed phones, faxes and accessories
Cisco
Mobile accessories
Cisco
Subscriptions and prepaid products
Cisco
Networks and telecoms
Network infrastructure
Cisco, Cisco (IronPort), Cisco (Lancope), Cisco (Meraki), Purple, Ucopia, VMware
Voice- and video-over-IP hardware and software
Cisco
Original spareparts
Original spareparts
Cisco
POS and AIDC
RFID hardware and software
Cisco
Security
IT security
Cisco, Cisco (IronPort), Cisco (OpenDNS), Purple, Ucopia, VMware
Services and cloud computing
Cloud
Cisco, Cisco (IronPort), Cisco (Meraki), Cisco (ScanSafe), Purple, Ucopia, VMware
Services
Cisco, Cisco (Cognio), Cisco (IronPort), Ucopia, VMware
Software
Corporate software
Cisco, Cisco (Acano), VMware
Operating systems
VMware
Storage
Storage infrastructure
Cisco
Storage servers
Cisco
Storage software
Cisco, VMware
Value added services
After-sale consulting, after-sale service, architecture design, audit, authorized training centre, brand-dedicated sales staff, BTO, business plan help, cash-and-carry, co-marketing funds, configuration help, customer loyalty program, dedicated contacts, demo products, demos, direct shipping to final client, e-commerce site, e-mailing, export service, field sales staff, hardware connection/cabling, hardware installation, hardware tests, hot-line, information newsletter, lead generation, leasing, logistics, maintenance, manufacturer certifications, meeting room, modeling, newsletters, on-site maintenance, on-site quote, on-site training, online order status checking, personalized help, personalized shipping, practice development, pre-sale consulting, product catalog, product loan, product search, project management help, project monitoring and control, project-dedicated sales staff, regular special offers, remote installation, repackaging, retail-dedicated sales staff, return-to-base warranty, sales help, seminar centre, shipments tracking, show-room, software customization, software tests, special offer lists, specific preparations, standard exchange, system integration, technical deployment, technology watch, telemarketing, thematic catalogs, training centre, transfer of skills, trial products
Minimum delivery time
National : 24 hour(s)
International : NC
Our directory is updated daily through information sent by vendors and distributors. Here are the latest updates :
Luckystar Computers (I) Pvt Ltd -
India - Specialist
Netsafe Solutions Hravtska d.o.o. -
Croatia - VAD
Netsafe Solutions Bulgaria e.o.o.d. -
Bulgaria - VAD
Netsafe Solutions Srl -
Romania - VAD
Arrow ECS Slovakia s r.o. -
Slovakia - VAD
Share Distribuzione Srl -
Italy - VAD
Ignition Technology Sub-Saharan Africa -
South Africa - VAD
Ignition Technology ME -
United Arab Emirates - VAD
Ignition Technology France -
France - VAD
Kosmotech (KSM YuA TOV) -
Ukraine - Specialist
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