News

Westcon Group Announces Acquisition to Claim Specialty Networking Distribution Leadership in Caribbean, Central and South America

Tarrytown, NY, October 2, 2007--Westcon Group, Inc., the leading specialty distributor in networking, convergence, security and mobility, announced that it has acquired the assets of Cernet of America, Inc. and its related Mexican company, Cernet Tecnologia en Telecomunicaciones, S.A. de C.V. Cernet is a value-added distributor known for its strength in Wireless Networking, LAN/WAN, and Security Systems and has a customer base of over 300 resellers throughout the CALA (Caribbean and Latin America) region. 

The acquisition increases Westcon Group’s value proposition in wireless technology and security while providing additional geographic reach into CALA and Mexico, two regions previously not served by Westcon Group. Cernet has been serving customers in this region since its founding over 15 years ago and its line card consists of vendors including Motorola, Alcatel-Lucent, Foundry and Proxim Wireless. 

Otavio Barbosa, general manager of Westcon Brazil, commented: "As we expand our reach in South America beyond Brazil and across the entire South and Latin American region, we have the opportunity to develop new customer relationships while serving an entirely new customer base focused on the service provider market. For these customers, we bring to bear strong vendor relationships and a proven solutions-oriented delivery model.” 

Norberto Milán, Vice President Enterprise Sales of Nortel, added: "This acquisition is very good news for the CALA and Mexican-based reseller community. As businesses become more innovative in the way that they communicate, Westcon Group brings an unparalleled degree of focus and expertise in convergence and mobility. Resellers in these regions will be able to leverage a world-class distribution infrastructure and core solutions expertise to their advantage." 

Westcon Group intends to provide resellers in the CALA and Mexican regions with access to its international award-winning solution programs in the near future and also plans on developing a dedicated ISP-practice to help resellers accelerate sales opportunities in the service provider market. 

"Until now, no other distributor has been able to deliver end-to-end networking solutions to the CALA region," said Paulo Henrique Pichini, VP Latin America & Brazil President of Getronics Ltda. "By bringing its programs and practices to this geographic area, Westcon will help resellers expand their existing value proposition to include other strategic elements such as convergence and security."   


About Westcon Group
Westcon Group, Inc. is the leading specialty distributor in networking, security, mobility and convergence for leading technology vendors, including Cisco, Nortel and Avaya, Inc. Through its Westcon, Comstor and Voda One business practices, Westcon Group sells products and services to resellers, systems integrators and service providers. Westcon Group has particular expertise in the convergence of voice, data and video applications and technologies, including voice-over Internet protocol, or VoIP, security for networking and communications systems, remote access, Internet and e-business, virtual private networks, videoconferencing and wireless connectivity. For more information, visit http://www.westcongroup.com/.

Jeffrey Touzeau                                   
Westcon Group, Inc.                    
(914) 829-7388                          
jtouzeau@westcongroup.com