Synnex Celebrates Growth Following Westcon-Comstor, Convergys Acquisitions

PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA – Synnex and its partners are capitalizing on acquisitions and building out portfolios.

Two prevalent themes of the Synnex Varnex Conference are the company’s expansion in cloud, mobility and IoT, and its recently closed purchases of Westcon-Comstor and Convergys.

And both trends have resulted in growth.

Synnex’s Peter Larocque

Peter Larocque, president of North American technology solutions for the distributor, shared growth numbers with the partner audience Friday morning. Synnex has undergone 125 consecutive quarters of profit and gone from 360th on the Fortune 500 in 2007 to 169th in 2018. He also reported that the first three quarters of fiscal year 2018 saw 23 percent year-over-year growth.

Larocque also praised the $600 million cash acquisition of Westcon-Comstor, which he said was a “big bet.”

“The existing teams on the Westcon-Comstor side and our vendor partners and our customers have worked with us, been loyal to us and have muscled through changes in roles and changes in systems,” he said.

Synnex’s Bob Stegner

The growth has occurred as much in the select Varnex community of resellers as in Synnex’ overall business. Varnex grew 20 percent year-over-year, according to Bob Stegner, senior vice president of marketing, North America.

Synnex leadership has highlighted the growth IoT solutions, whose customer interest Stegner said is “the highest I’ve ever seen.”

“What’s evolved from our standpoint is that we have put together a lot more technology solutions,” Stegner told Channel Partners. And the influx of new technologies led to an influx in new resources for partners.

Ben Niernberg is senior vice president of MNJ Technologies, a Synnex partner. MNJ works with multiple distributors, but it recently turned its entire Cisco practice over to Synnex, and Niernberg said his company works with Synnex the most. He credited Synnex for its willingness to follow trends and transform.

MNJ’s Ben Niernberg

“I fully believe of all of the distributors, they’re transforming just like we are as a VAR or as an MSP,” Niernberg said.

MNJ has made a point of being “hyper-focused on the edge,” working with vendors like Talari and Silver Peak for SD-WAN.

“We will only be as successful as the partners that we have and that we work with, and I firmly believe that Synnex is extraordinarily well-suited to help us grow and help enable our growth,” he said. “Whether that be through cloud-based services, whether that be through Microsoft, whether that be through Azure, whether that be through SD-WAN or network infrastructure, they’re putting the things in palace that we need to be successful.”

Niernberg echoed what Tim Acker of Synnex told Channel Futures the previous day: that customers are more focused on business objectives and problem than specific technology.

“We’re not addressing, ‘I’ve got a RAM issue’ like you used to,” Niernberg said. ” You’re addressing, ‘I’ve got a business problem, and I need to move a certain amount of data back and forth. I need to understand how I can speed up time to market.”