Value-added distributor Comstor Southern Africa, a division of the Westcon group, has appointed David Odayar as a data centre architecture lead.
The company says Odayar brings with him more than 15 years of sales and marketing experience, and will be working with vendor partners and resellers in both the datacentre and security areas of business, in SA as well as the rest of the southern Africa region.
"As the architecture lead for Oracle, VMware and Veeam, I am responsible for proactively growing the vendor brands as per vendor requirements, as well as strategically positioning and aligning our resellers with our vendors. At the same time, I will be looking at growing the Comstor data centre and security business by taking on new value-added resellers, says Odayar.
"I believe, with the addition of new vendor accredited value-added resellers, we will be able to significantly grow our business. To this end, we will be working with these partners and customer so they are in a better position to service senior management and executives within the customer and end-user landscape, ultimately influencing business decisions related to the procurement of datacentre and security solutions, products and services, throughout the SADC region," he notes.
Odayar explains his immediate goal is to ensure the distributor's requirements are met and internal teams have received adequate training, placing them in a position to sell and position the myriad vendor solutions within the Comstor portfolio with its resellers.
"My long-term goal is to further enhance the role of the business unit within the company, and ultimately grow its profitability."
According to Odayar, there is an enormous amount of competition in the channel at the moment, coming from all parts of business.
"I do, however, believe the biggest challenge will come from competitive brands and how they position themselves to market," he says.
"It remains our role, as a distributor, to educate and inform our partners and ultimately their end-user customers, so they are in a position to make educated and qualified decisions about the technologies in which they invest."
Louise Taute, Comstor director at Westcon Group Southern Africa, believes Odayar brings with him a strong understanding of the challenges facing African businesses, with particular reference to the areas of security, networking and telecommunications, virtualisation and storage.
This puts him in an ideal position to act as a valuable member of the Comstor team, notes Taute.
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