Westcon ousts Ilion to grab vendor contract

Westcon has replaced Ilion as the preferred 3Com distributor for Computacenter in a deal which is expected to generate up to £15m in revenue annually.

In gaining the contract, Westcon has mirrored the success of sister company RBR Networks, which won the Computacenter Cisco preferred distributorship earlier this year (PC Dealer, 30 June).

Speaking exclusively to PC Dealer, Jeremy Keefe, sales director at Westcon, said the preferred 3Com distributorship was its first significant deal at Computacenter.

He claimed: "We had a very small relationship with Computacenter on Madge products but it came to us about the 3Com deal because it had heard we could supply the level of service it required."

The contract involves the full range of 3Com products except NICs and modems, added Keefe.

Neil Meddick, divisional manager of enterprise network at Computacenter, said the tender process showed that distributors were moving away traditional distribution models and adding more value-added services.

Computacenter has been using Westcon as a second source supplier, but Meddick revealed the distributor's imaginative response to the tender, led to Computacenter giving Westcon the deal.