Westcon Forms Comstor Middle East

Comstor Middle East, announced Wednesday, will be based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and will provide Cisco products, sales tools, technical, integration and financial services and marketing support to VARs in the Middle East, according to the Tarrytown, N.Y.-based distributor.

Westcon Group also will bring its OneDefense and OneVoice marketing and sales support programs to the region with the new company, which will be led by Steve Lockie, former Tech Data managing director of the U.K. and Middle East.

Tom Dolan, president and CEO of Westcon Group, said the move will spur Westcon's and Cisco's growth in the burgeoning Middle East market.

"I think most of the IT industry recognizes that's a very high-growth area. There's a lot of spending on IT infrastructure. There's a lot of building. In the Middle East, in general, there's a lot of opportunity for IT vendors. So in our case, the distribution of Cisco product, we would expect to get some measurable revenue," Dolan said.

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"What we want to do with the multinational representation of product lines is to build more strength in the relationship that we have with the vendor, in this case Cisco," he added.

Willem de Haan, business development director of Westcon and Comstor European operations, said the Middle East is an untapped market. "There's a saying that goes, 'If you don't move forward, you're moving backward.' Westcon has a very strong position in several markets in Europe. Those markets are mature markets," he explained. "It doesn't mean there's no more growth, but it does mean that growth is relatively low compared to the opportunity in new markets."

De Haan noted that the potential growth in emerging markets is "a multiple of the growth numbers we can expect from markets in the U.K., France or Germany.

"The Middle East is clearly one of those emerging markets," he said. "Our focus across the globe is to invest in those territories that will bring us expansion, and especially territories that will carry substantial growth for the future."