Westcon Group To Buy Comstor.net

Westcon Group has reached agreement to buy Comstor.net from GE Capital IT Solutions for about $100 million.

Comstor.net will operate under Westcon's RBR Networks division, which focuses on Cisco Systems Inc. products. The company becomes a wholly owned Westcon subsidiary and its headquarters will remain in the Washington area, said Alan Mark Smith, Westcon vice president and chief operating officer.

"We don't look at this as a consolidation merger; it's an accretive merger," said Smith. "It brings us the Cisco relationship as well as a series of suppliers that do not overlap with our current portfolio."

Westcon Group will have two global distribution arms, RBR Networks for Cisco and a Westcon division focusing on Nortel Networks Corp., Lucent Technologies and 3Com Corp.

"This brings us the fourth leg of the horse in the U.S.; we had the other three here," said Smith. "It's just a component of our growth strategy. We had hit a point of critical mass, where in order to offer the broadest set of technologies, we had to expand. Cisco becomes part of that mix."

Cisco will account for about one-third of Westcon Group's sales, which are now expected to top $1 billion annually, Smith said.

Comstor.net broke off from from GE IT Distribution Group four months ago to focus on networking products, while GE IT Distribution, containing Access Graphics Inc. and Integration Alliance Corp., maintained its focus on Sun Microsystems Inc., Silicon Graphics Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. Unix products.

Perry Monych, chief executive of GE IT Distribution, insisted Access Graphics and Integration Alliance are not for sale.

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