Comstor hires new heads to spread Cisco security gospel

Distributor throwing more weight behind Cisco's security offering to reflect vendor's renewed emphasis on market

Distributor Comstor has enlisted four new UK heads to drive Cisco's security business, which emerged as a key focus area at the vendor's recent Partner Summit.

Security is the biggest profitability driver for Cisco partners, Wendy Bahr, senior vice president for channel at Cisco, said at the San Diego event, and the vendor's focus on the market has been underlined in recent months in its acquisitions of Portcullis and Neohapsis.

In December, Comstor launched Prove the Future, a scheme designed to boost awareness for Cisco's security portfolio, and Comstor EMEA marketing director Warwick Taylor said the distributor is now rolling it out across Europe.

More than 30 proof of values in the UK alone have been carried out under the scheme, which offers partners a free trial of Cisco's ASA with FirePOWER.

"Security was upfront and centre at the partner conference," he said. "We are rolling out our resources in that programme across 11 countries in EMEA on the back of Cisco making a concerted effort in the security area."

Four heads in the UK have already been enlisted to drive the programme, which Comstor is now calling ThreatScan Proof of Value, Taylor added.

Taylor said Comstor was on board with all the major announcements at the Cisco Partner Summit, including around Cisco's new HyperFlex hyper-converged solution, which the distributor is now pushing out to the channel.

Cisco is also throwing more weight behind distribution-led migration programmes to help end users migrate from old technology to newer Cisco product, Taylor said.

To reflect this, Comstor is launching Comstor Boost, Taylor said.

"They are making it easier for distributors to run these programmes," he said.

"There has been a refresh in the back office in how trade-ins are managed, to make it easier for us to drive the opportunity with the resellers. We had not really embraced it before as it was a bit complex, but we are beginning to embrace it because it is a big focus for Cisco."

Taylor added that Comstor has also launched Comstor Click, a Cisco services automated renewals engine, another focus area for the distributor following the partner summit.

"It enables us to automate renewals on Cisco services and we are just launching that out to our countries," he said. "Resellers are not always aware when contracts are up for renewal so we have automated the process so they can be proactive."