Gone are the days when IT distributors were box droppers. Today these companies, which form a central role in the global technology ecosystem, must be much more than that to succeed.
That’s according to David Grant, global CEO of Westcon-Comstor, who spoke to TechCentral earlier this week in an exclusive interview at the company’s new South African head office in Midrand, Johannesburg.
Westcon-Comstor, which is owned by JSE-listed multinational IT company Datatec, today generates more than half its revenue from cybersecurity solutions and services, according to Grant, who told TechCentral that although only 30% of its sales now come from hardware, “warehouses and boxes are still an important part of the business”.
Westcon, which has as presence in 83 countries and which employs 3 600 people, generates the bulk of its revenue in Europe (about 65%), followed by Asia-Pacific (25%) and Middle East and Africa (10%). In South Africa, the company competes with established distributors such as Alviva (parent of Axiz, Pinnacle and Tarsus), First Distribution and Mustek.
The MEA business, which employs about 500 people, is headed by regional executive vice president Rakesh Parbhoo. It has four focus regions that operate in a hub-and-spoke model across the region:
- Southern Africa, with the Joburg office serving the region;
- The rest of sub-Saharan Africa, which includes West Africa, East Africa and the Indian Ocean islands;
- Saudi Arabia and North Africa, with a hub in Riyadh; and
- The Gulf region, serviced from offices in Dubai.
The South African operation also handles the finance function for the entire Europe, Middle East and Africa.
The company does not operate in the Americas after Datatec sold that business in 2017 to Synnex in a transaction that saw billions of rand flowing to Datatec shareholders in the form of a special dividend. (Since then, Synnex merged with Tech Data to create the world’s largest IT distributor.)
‘Unassailable’
“If we have a global customer who wants to deploy into North America, we can do that,” said Grant. “But we don’t compete there” because it’s a difficult market to enter organically. Instead, a conscious decision was taken to focus Westcon-Comstor on building an “unassailable position” in the markets in which it already operates.
It is already in a strong position with some of the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) it works with. An example of this, said Grant, is the Cisco distribution business in Southern Africa, which was recognised last year as Cisco’s global distributor of the year.
Westcon-Comstor focuses on three main areas in technology, namely networking (38% of its 2024 revenues), cybersecurity (51%) and cloud computing (11%). In Southern Africa, there is a bigger contribution from Microsoft software and networking, he said, without providing a similar breakdown.
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“If you go back a few years, the business was mainly networking. Today it’s mainly security. Sixty-five percent of our revenues last year were recurring in nature – either support contracts or software subscriptions – and only 30% of our sales came from hardware,” he said.
Westcon-Comstor works closely with its channel of reseller partners to train them on the latest cybersecurity solutions from its vendors. It’s providing more of this kind of support to the channel than it did in the past, and vendors are leaning increasingly on distributors like Westcon to reach end-user organisations rather than serving them directly.
As software vendors have moved from perpetual licensing to software-as-a-service models, the management of this has become more complex for distributors and their resellers, according to Grant. This has made training and support of channel partners that much more critical.
“As solution complexity increases, the opportunity for a distributor to provide more support at the end-user level (with the reseller partner) is increasing,” he said.
“We are an extension of vendors’ go-to-market models into the channel. If you look at our strategic vendors, our teams are pretty much dedicated only to one brand and are dedicated to same objectives.”
Distributors have been forced to alter their internal skills mix to support a software-and-services style of business rather than the traditional box moving that they were known for historically.
It’s no easy task, though. According to Parbhoo, there is a dire shortage of cybersecurity skills around the world, but it’s a crisis that’s even worse in Southern Africa. Westcon runs programmes specifically designed to nurture security talent, which is then deployed internally at Westcon or with its reseller or OEM partners. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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