With Eye On The Data Center, Westcon Expands Fujitsu Relationship

In addition to recently picking up Fujitsu storage products in the U.S., Westcon Group has expanded the relationship to include Canada and further integrated Fujitsu into its data center portfolio with Cisco Systems and Brocade.

"This is really reflecting our commitment to our data center play and builds on the strong relationships with all vendors," said Lynn Smurthwaite-Murphy, senior vice president of U.S. and Canada for Westcon Group.

Westcon added Fujitsu's Primergy server and Eternus storage lines last month.

Westcon's data center vision is driven by new customer demands on IT infrastructure, including video, bring-your-own-device and anytime/anywhere computing, Smurthwaite-Murphy said.

"We're also hearing about big data and business intelligence, too. The demand for more data analysis. All of those things are driving CIOs to find new ways to provide secure access to corporate information on a limited budget," she said. "It's a move to fabric-based architecture and the virtualization of cloud to give them IT in a more cost-effective and flexible way. They're all driving that change in the data center. That's leading us to why we developed this partnership [with Fujitsu]."

Related: The Best Selling Vendors of 2011

Westcon's role as a distributor is evolving as well, Smurthwaite-Murphy said, as virtualized data center solutions become de rigueur in today's end-user computing environment. The distributor needed to broaden its portfolio and offer more complete solutions to solution providers, she said.

"Storage and servers are part of the data center; as vendors virtualize software offerings it's more important to provide final assembly points and take virtualized software and combine it with storage or server solutions so it's easier to integrate into the data center," she said.

As an example, Westcon has built Avaya Voicemail Pro on Fujitsu servers. "It's a great synergy as we look to broader our channel. It was a great fit," Smurthwaite-Murphy said.

NEXT: Westcon Hires IBM Veteran For Data Center

Westcon also has hired IBM veteran Dan Papes as senior vice president of emerging technologies and data center practice to help build the disributor's data center offerings.

"His last role was global sales for the cloud strategy [at IBM]. He's building out a supporting team with business development and product managers," Smurthwaite-Murphy said. "We also continue to share on our own experiences. We're on our own virtualization journey. We're now 100 percent virtualized and we've built a hybrid cloud for our own corporate network. We'll share with partners."

Going forward, Westcon plans to offer accelerated training for solution providers, resources around learning to sell solutions in an ROI model, marketing, technical support and more, according to the distributor.

"A lot of partners have been involved with the data center. They're seeing unified communications, and a lot of partners are touching it in some way. We're working with some that want to expand the solution and deliver a broader solution," Smurthwaite-Murphy said. "When they want to move to virtualization, they have to get the network ready for a virtualized environment. Our partners are in there already. This provides them more of the solution."