Westcon Security, a Westcon Group company and specialty distributor of security solutions, has named a new vice-president to lead the division and a new distribution partnership with Palo Alto Networks.
Lynn Smurthwaite-Murphy, senior vice-president for the U.S. and Canada at Westcon Group, said in an effort to become the “go-to” partner for resellers in the security space, Westcon has inked a distribution deal with Palo Alto Networks to stock its entire line of network security solutions.
As well, Andrew Warren has been appointed the new vice-president for the division. He’ll be responsible for Westcon Security’s U.S. Activities, which include strategic vision and managing partner and customer relationships. He has more than 15 years of channel experience and, most recently, worked at distributor AAvnet Technology Solutions, where he was responsible for growing the company’s domestic network security business.
Warren will report to Smurthwaite-Murphy and work closely with Dan Forbes, who was formerly the head of Westcon Canada’s Cisco business and is now the vice-president at Westcon Canada. Warren takes over for Laura Usewicz, who has since moved to a new company.
“Warren is a fantastic addition to our team,” Smurthwaite-Murphy said. “In order to be the go-to security partner in the industry, we also needed to make sure we have an innovative portfolio of best-in-class solutions, which is why we partnered with Paolo Alto Networks. Customers were asking us for next generation firewall solutions.”
Smurthwaite-Murphy said due to constantly evolving industry trends, especially around computing and the blurring of lines between personal and business applications, more applications are now going through fewer ports on the network. This creates a need for a more granular filtering of the applications that are going thru those ports.
“At the same time, customers also wanted more flexibility when they create policies and rules in order to run their network,” she added.
For channel partners, Smurthwaite-Murphy said the partnership with Palo Alto Networks will help them grow their businesses.
“I see partners growing their businesses in one of five ways,” she said. “They may decide to expand geographically, have a vertical focus, find ways to reduce costs, make an acquisition, or diversify their vendor portfolio. Our partnership and expanded offerings address the latter and from our experience, many channel partners are expected to be a trusted advisor to their install base of customers. We’re helping our partners provide options and best-in-class solutions to their end-users.”
To further enable their network of more than 3,000 North American channel partners, Smurthwaite-Murphy said Westcon Security also has its SecurePoint program. With it, partners can take advantage of things such as product training, pre and post-sales support, financing, demand generation, targeted financing and credit programs. Partners can also receive tier one and tier two-level support and demo and evaluation equipment thru the program, she added.
Follow Maxine Cheung on Twitter: @MaxineCheungCDN.
