Westcon Group Adds Microsoft To Line Card

Westcon Group Wednesday announced a distribution agreement with Microsoft that will focus on Microsoft's unified communications offerings, virtualization, business productivity online suite (BPOS) hosted services and security integration.

Westcon will distribute Microsoft products and services to only U.S. VAR partners currently, but executives said in a Channelweb.com interview they would seek to expand the offering to international partners as well.

"We took a look at Microsoft three years ago and saw where they were going and we said, 'We have to have Microsoft in our portfolio,' " said Anthony Daley, Westcon's executive vice president for the Americas. "We saw the market going to unified communications and saw that the enablement of unified communications meant having to embed in Active Directory. In enterprise networking, Microsoft is a dominant player."

"The other piece we looked at was in our security business, and we saw Microsoft as taking a significant direction in cleaning up and creating better efficiency in and around their security," he explained. "Then, we looked at the market and the push toward virtualization and cloud computing in the data center, and we saw Microsoft as having key transport applications."

Daley said Westcon VARs were being encouraged toward a "different approach to communications," and that Microsoft's offerings present "true integrated applications that are clearly focused on voice, data, security, mobility and synergies among different business units."

He added that having Microsoft as an addition to Westcon's line card will help expand Westcon's reach to ISV partners focused on particular vertical markets such as health-care.

"We don't look at it as selling Microsoft licenses," Daley said. "It wasn't about Exchange on the desktop, you know?"

Daley said Westcon's Microsoft portfolio will be targeted primarily for enterprise and midmarket solutions, and that Westcon would be adding training for partners on Microsoft solutions in the coming weeks.

"Westcon's deep networking experience and reseller-focused services will allow us to very quickly scale opportunities in the VoIP and SIP communications areas," said Rob Moyer, director of U.S. distribution of Microsoft, in a statement. "This year and beyond, a large part of our strategy is centered on unified communications and S+S [Software + Services]. Westcon's heritage as a VoIP and security player, combined with their highly focused vendor portfolio and loyal customer base, makes them a very natural fit to our strategy moving forward."