Distributor Westcon has catapulted its Comstor brand into the Czech Republic with the backing of vendor partner Cisco.

The Prague-based outpost will offer Cisco products and services alongside Comstor’s Cisco-oriented solution programmes.

The move comes just a month after Westcon became the first distributor to sign a global distribution agreement with Cisco, which it claims allows it to streamline global transactions for resellers.

According to Gartner, the Czech IT market will be worth more than $13bn (£8bn) by 2012 and IT spending will be worth more than 13 per cent of the country’s GDP.

Jon Pritchard, vice president of Comstor Europe, said: “Our investment in this region is a fundamental component of our broader emerging market strategy with our global vendor partner, Cisco.”

While other distributors, most notably Ingram Micro, have recently retrenched in EMEA, Westcon has spent the past few years expanding its presence. On top of its purchases of pan-European security distributor Noxs and UK voice specialist Crane, the distributor has also recently acquired in Turkey and Africa.

Tomas Kupka, Cisco’s channel manager in the Czech Republic, said: “By opening its Comstor operations in Prague, Westcon Group provides the Czech Republic’s reseller channel with a very strong Cisco-oriented value proposition, backed with all the product knowledge, support services and Cisco expertise our customers would expect.”