The ENGAGE2015 event took place at the Grange St. Paul’s Hotel last month with over 23 leading vendors in attendance from the communications, security and networking industries including Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft and Palo Alto. An agenda of over 30 seminars addressed solving business challenges in the end-user space and new market opportunities for VARs. Complementing the day, professional sales coach Matt Crabtree challenged reactive attitudes to growth while Head of Economics for HSBC commercial banking Mark Berrisford-Smith gave insight on how global markets are impacting local commerce.
“Westcon boldly went ‘back to the future’!” commented Darryl Brick, Regional Partner Director, UK&I at Juniper Networks. “They put people, the heart and soul of our industry, back together to meet, listen and network. They took the already proven face-to-face concept to the next level with interesting guests, snappy vendor sessions and an environment conducive for partners to learn.
“ENGAGE presented a tremendous opportunity for partners to learn about emerging technologies within our vendor community,” added Tony Nevill, Managing Director UK&I for WestconGroup. “We successfully demonstrated how our partners can extend their reach with new vendor technologies and achieve greater customer wallet-share with the support of WestconGroup’s comprehensive services and finance portfolio. Our accredited training, design, implementation and support services significantly reduce the barriers for partners and ENGAGE was a perfect forum to introduce this.”
The event closed with an awards presentation recognising seven solution provider partners for revenue growth, most impressive deal of the year and a cross-practice, partner-of-the-year award. This year’s winners included:
Comstor Deal of the Year: GGR Communications
Comstor Growth Partner: SHI UK
Westcon Security Deal of the Year: Verizon
Westcon Security Growth Partner: SecureData
Westcon UC&C Deal of the Year: Sabio
Westcon UC&C Growth Partner: LAN3
Westcon|Comstor Partner of the Year: Alternative Networks
“It was great to attend an event that went further than detailing the latest product updates. Instead ENGAGE provided deep insight into technology solutions and key market-place trends,” noted Pete Whitehouse, account director, Alternative Networks. We were delighted to be recognised as WestconGroup’s Partner-of-the-Year as it demonstrates our capabilities to build enhanced solutions across the portfolio. We’re looking forward to attending next year!