This summer, 23-year channel veteran, Lynn Smurthwaite-Murphy was promoted to senior vice-president, US and Canada for Westcon Group Before this, she was the vice-president and general manager for Westcon Canada.
2010 also marked a milestone for the distributor’s Cisco-only (NASDAQ: CSCO) focused division, Comstor, which was brought to Canada a little over a year ago.
Although the distributor began selling Cisco solutions in January 2008, the company launched its Cisco business in Canada under the Comstor brand last September.
Now in its second year here, Comstor Canada had the highest amount of growth year over year compared to the other subsidiaries located around the world.
Westcon also beefed up its data centre offerings by providing more security options for partners and end-users through a partnership to deliver the entire line of products from Palo Alto Networks.
For channel partners, Smurthwaite-Murphy said the partnership with Palo Alto Networks will help them grow their businesses.
“I see partners growing their businesses in one of five ways,” she said. “They may decide to expand geographically, have a vertical focus, find ways to reduce costs, make an acquisition, or diversify their vendor portfolio. Our partnership and expanded offerings address the latter.”
The specialty distributor also launched its Express to Success program this year to help partners sell Check Point (NASDAQ: CHKP) solutions. The program is built on four key elements: market development, sales materials, personalized training and demand generation.