RUSSELL BLACKBURN ’ s role as Senior Vice President , Digital Sales involves maintaining and accelerating adoption of Westcon- Comstor ’ s PartnerCentral marketplace , while more broadly working across the entire company to facilitate and enable its digital sales transition .

Westcon-Comstor is a value-added distributor operating across EMEA and APAC , specialising in cybersecurity , networking and cloud . Going to market through two lines of business – Westcon and Comstor – the company takes pride in its digital leadership and data-driven approach to creating new opportunities for vendors and partners .

Russell ’ s role as Senior Vice President , Digital Sales involves maintaining and accelerating adoption of Westcon- Comstor ’ s PartnerCentral marketplace , while more broadly working across the entire company to facilitate and enable its digital sales transition . This transition is central to Westcon-Comstor ’ s strategy and is a key element of its broader digital transformation .

What are your strengths and abilities that you bring to the above role ?

Prior to taking up his new role , Russell spent more than a decade in a senior leadership role in the Cisco-focused Comstor arm of Westcon-Comstor . This experience gives him a valuable perspective on what partners and vendors need from a distributor , and how a market-leading approach to digital sales can enable a distributor to accelerate vendor and partner growth .

His knowledge of the platform and marketplace economy means he is well placed to identify and implement further enhancements to PartnerCentral , a multivendor marketplace where Westcon-

Comstor partners can configure , quote , and order complex hybrid solutions – software , hardware , cloud services , or a combination of all three – while more broadly managing and growing their business profitably as they transition to subscription and recurring revenue models .

Please describe the opportunities and challenges that exist for channel partners in your market ?

Russell notes that , in his experience , data is often both the biggest opportunity and the biggest challenge facing partners across different markets as they transition to recurring revenue models .

To validate this , he points to Westcon- Comstor ’ s recent Bridging the Gap research report , which found that 97 % of partners see data as important in their journey to an Everything-as-a-Service , XaaS future . At the same time , access to the right data was found to be the biggest obstacle facing partners in their pursuit of recurring revenues .

This trend was consistent across all markets where research for the report was carried out : Australia , Indonesia , South Africa , Kenya , Nigeria , Sweden , Denmark , Norway and the UK .

Handling of multiple diverse data types emerged as partners ’ biggest practical challenge and many acknowledged the need to bolster their internal capabilities to address gaps in how they utilise and apply data for lifecycle selling .

An overwhelming 95 % identified data capabilities as a key investment priority for the coming year , with 70 % stating that they already have an in-house data and analytics function as a foundation .

Russell Blackburn , Senior Vice President , Digital Sales , Westcon-Comstor

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