Westcon Group Lays Off 5 Percent of U.S. Workforce

The layoffs were part of consolidation efforts in finance, logistics and management across the company's three organizational units: Comstor, Voda One and Westcon, he said. The Tarrytown-based distributor had a total of 339 employees in the United States before the layoffs.

"We are reorganizing the business to benefit from some added operational efficiencies," Smith said. "As it stands, we have three disparate financing organizations, three logistics organizations."

For example, Comstor's The Pro Shop services organization, a technical support center in Montreal and professional services staff in New York are consolidating into one team, Smith said.

"We will have the right people so that if we don't have an opportunity in the Cisco [Systems] marketplace, it doesn't mean we won't have opportunity in Avaya or Nortel [Networks]," he said.

Westcon Group, a privately held company, had about $1.69 billion in revenue in 2001, down from $2.07 billion in 2000, according to the VAR Business Distribution 25 rankings.

"The market has changed, what drives demand has changed, what sells has changed. We have to look at making our SG&A as efficient as possible. We need to evolve toward future growth as a provider of networking and communications solutions," Smith said.

Westcon Group will increase its focus on security and convergence solutions going forward, Smith said.