The Catalyst interacted with Renton D’Souza, Vice President, Comstor MEA to learn more about Comstor’s core offerings, key growth areas and priorities. This interaction highlighted Comstor’s initiatives to build on Cisco’s core strengths in collaboration, data center, and networking.
Westcon-Comstor has a long-standing reputation as a global technology distributor. Can you provide a brief overview of Comstor and its Cisco-specific approach?
As a Global Solutions Provider and a Specialist Distributor, Westcon-Comstor focuses on connecting IT Channel Partners with World-Class IT Vendors.
Within this organization, Comstor is a Cisco-exclusive business that maintains an extensive knowledge of the channel, which allows us to provide our partners with unmatched insight into the company’s technology, solutions, and programs. Our deep, strategic relationship means we are a true extension of Cisco in the marketplace, working closely with partners to build their Cisco business.
In addition to building on Cisco’s core – collaboration, data center, and networking – our passionate team helps partners grow by realizing new, recurring revenue Cisco opportunities in security, software, and services.
What are the key advantages, core offerings, and differentiators of Comstor?
When you partner with Comstor, you are guaranteed to partner with world-class vendors, global and local, emerging and established, and we create these collaborative ecosystems for our IT communities.
We also provide a wide range of services throughout the project lifecycle, including professional services, education, support, supply chain, and financial services. Due to our trade and logistical expertise, we are able to handle cross-border transactions for our partners.
The fact that we are data-driven allows us to make meaningful and insightful decisions that help our partners drive business value. The go-to-market programs we offer our partners help them maximize every opportunity. We are also committed to sustainability, so we are committed to creating a sustainable future for our company and for the environment at large. That is what Comstor is and what we do in a nutshell.
What are Comstor’s key growth areas and priorities for the coming year?
As a Cisco-centric company, we focus our entire go-to-market strategy on enabling our partners and increasing Cisco’s market penetration. Cisco is placing a large bet on certain key market opportunities; among them – security is of utmost importance.
Cisco has invested heavily with Comstor and collaborated closely in the market to expand their security portfolio and acquisitions. This has enabled the development of a comprehensive cybersecurity portfolio, which we are leveraging to increase market penetration. Cybersecurity is becoming increasingly essential for organizations these days, and Cisco has made large investments in this space.
Since they are already among the largest cybersecurity vendors in the world, we will be able to leverage their entire portfolio to drive great opportunities with both their partners and end users.
How does Comstor address the security concerns specific to different verticals, such as healthcare and finance, especially in the context of hybrid and private cloud setups?
To address security concerns specific to different verticals like healthcare and finance, Comstor adopts a tailored approach that recognizes the unique regulatory and operational demands of each industry. These industries place a high value on data privacy. Comstor provides solutions that focus on securing sensitive consumer data, ensuring encrypted communications, and safeguarding against breaches across both hybrid and private cloud environments. In order to analyze real-time threats, it uses advanced cybersecurity frameworks to deliver secure, scalable infrastructure solutions.
Talos, a specialized team of data scientists at Cisco, analyzes data for potential threats and rapidly deploys protective measures across all Cisco devices. This process ensures centralized security and real-time threat mitigation. In this context, leveraging network as a sensor, we can gain a far better understanding of not just existing threats, but also discover new threats, analyze them and provide updates to improve defense. Here, a great deal of emphasis is placed on how quickly you respond to attacks and how quickly you rectify them.
What is Comstor’s go-to-market strategy in the region?
As a channel-led business, everything we do is aimed at helping our partners. The focus of our entire go-to-market strategy on partner success and providing them with tools and data that enable them to deliver better business results to the end-customers.
To accomplish this, we follow a consistent strategy. In other words, whether it is generic or specific marketing, lead generation, or even post-sale services, we follow all of these. Our goal is to achieve partner success and deliver meaningful outcomes for end users.
What technology trends align with Comstor’s business, and how do you position yourself to capitalize on those offerings?
Needless to say, Artificial Intelligence is the biggest tech trend right now. Every manufacturer, every vendor, every vertical is trying to integrate AI into their operations. Currently however, there are limited use cases. However, we firmly believe that as we move forward, AI will be integrated into organizations, systems, solutions, and processes to improve productivity or reduce costs. AI will be considered by every organization with both these objectives in mind. Within a couple of years, we will see that these LLM models will be able to drive far better business outcomes. As a result, they will be adopted.
This scenario also presents the challenge of integrating available solutions into an organization to drive outcomes. Each solution must be tailored to the specific needs of the organization or industry, which is where difficulties arise.
In this exclusive interaction, The Catalyst gained an overview of Comstor’s commitment to addressing the distinct security needs of various industries. Comstor demonstrates its readiness to safeguard sensitive data by tailoring solutions to meet industry-specific regulatory and operational security demands.
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