Westcon Group has added another networking vendor to its portfolio in the shape of Siemens Enterprise Communications (SEN Group).

The past two years have seen the Cisco ally diversify from its roots by signing deals with Juniper in 2008 and HP ProCurve at the beginning of this year.

Continuing that trend, it has now bagged pan-European distribution rights with another challenger to Cisco’s crown by joining SEN’s Go Forward! partner programme. It hopes the move will shore up its position in the unified communications space.

Westcon will distribute SEN’s entire IP solutions range to VARs in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Benelux.

David Grant, vice president, Europe at Westcon Convergence, said it is important that Westcon can offer a comprehensive UC portfolio as the market matures.

“This partnership with Siemens will allow us to support our base of resellers with an expanded level of converged communications technologies, to support a rising demand for IP telephony and ultimately unified communications,” he said.

Lars-Ole Hansen, head of EMEA indirect sales at SEN Group said: “Westcon is a respected provider across Europe, and this agreement will allow SEN Group to indirectly better support IT resellers across the continent with increased training, education and an end-to-end communications infrastructure.”

Despite Westcon’s moves to beef up its range of networking solutions, Cisco actually rose from 55 to 57 per cent of its global turnover in its fiscal first half, year on year. The duo also signed a global partnership.