Trend Micro and Westcon to part ways

Bruen: We struggled to gain traction in Cisco partners

Trend Micro and distributor Westcon Group are parting company in the UK after admitting their quest to infiltrate Cisco dealers has largely failed.

The anti-virus vendor granted Westcon access to its full portfolio in November 2007, alongside incumbents Sphinx, Computerlinks, Ingram Micro and Blue Solutions.
The aim was to grab share from Cisco dealers that bought from the distributor’s Comstor arm.

Kay Bruen, UK managing director of Westcon Security, confirmed that the partnership will end at the end of February by mutual consent.

“We struggled to get sufficient traction in Cisco partners to merit either of us continuing," she explained. "We were not interested in taking renewals from Sphinx and Computerlinks because we were tasked with building new business.”

Bruen said the relationship may have worked out if it had been owned by Comstor and not Weston Security. She also admitted Cisco’s acquisition of security appliance vendor IronPort had complicated the duo’s plans.

“IronPort became a major part of Comstor’s portfolio and it offered higher margins and was more strategic to them,” she explained.

Bruen stressed the split had been amicable and that Trend would continue to be a strategic partner for the distributor in continental Europe.

Paul Anderson, UK and Ireland country director at Trend Micro, said he had no plans to appoint a replacement.

"The reality is we did not achieve the traction with Cisco partners that we thought we would," he said. "We found ourselves working with Westcon's security business, which was logical, but between us we did not leverage the Cisco bit which is where the relationship with partners stood."

Dave Ellis, e-security director at Computerlinks, said: "The relationship clearly was not working as the sales they have had in the past 18 months have been pretty much non-existent. Cisco resellers are not necessarily the same resellers that are selling anti-virus software."