Jon Pritchard, formerly general manager of Comstor, will assume the role of managing director for the combined business organisation, while Simon Thompson, former managing director of Westcon U.K. will be sales director. The group stress that for Westcon and Comstor customers the change will transpire seamlessly and there will be no interruptions in normal business activity.
The consolidation reflects Westcon Group's continued focus on delivering a broad range of solutions and it provides customers with a dramatically increased pool of resources from which to draw in key growth technologies such as security, convergence and mobility. From a branding perspective, both the Comstor and Westcon names will remain intact and continue to serve their respective customer bases. In the UK, both the Cirencester and Slough operations will remain open, with the company expecting a potential increase in headcount at both locations.
Barry Shakespeare, executive vice president, European sales and operations, Westcon Group, commented: "The decision to merge our Westcon and Comstor organisations in the UK has come about through direct requests from our customer community, the vast majority of whom already sell multi-vendor solutions. Ultimately, this change will increase their ability to compete by giving them access to our total range of voice and security solutions."
"Meanwhile, we have received unequivocal support in this decision from our entire stable of vendor partners, who stand to benefit by being exposed to a wider ranging base of increasingly solutions-oriented customers," he continued.