Westcon on way to Turkish delight

Westcon Group has become one of the first international distributors to touch down in Turkey after striking up a joint venture with local broadline goliath Index Group.

The networking distributor has grabbed a 50 per cent stake in Index’s networking arm Netex, the country’s dominant Cisco distributor, for an undisclosed sum.

Guy Koster, vice president of the technology solutions group at Westcon Group Europe, said partnering was the only viable option given that Turkey is yet to accede to the EU.

“Some of the challenges in Turkey have been addressed with the joint venture,” he said. “It is still subject to the tariffs and logistics issues that used to exist in the EU so it makes sense to leverage Netex’s logistics at the start.”

Willem de Haan, vice president of business development at Westcon Group, said the move would represent just the first step in a series of investments across the region.

“Now we’re in Turkey we have the opportunity to expand into the former Turkish states in the region. We’re also looking at different entry models into eastern Europe.”

Koster said Westcon would use Netex as a vehicle to roll out its mobility, convergence and security go-to-market programmes into Turkey.

“We launched them in the Gulf, and they took us from zero to 20 per cent market share in four months,” he said.

Alastair Edwards, senior analyst at market watcher Canalys, said: “Cisco will be very pleased that Westcon is doing this. Any global distributor moving into emerging markets will be strongly supported by their vendor partners.”

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