Channel partners across EMEA are navigating a rapidly evolving landscape shaped by cloud platforms, AI adoption and increasing demand for lifecycle-led services. Daniel Hurel, Senior Vice President, Westcon EMEA Go-To-Market at Westcon-Comstor, tells us how the company is helping partners transition to ecosystem-driven growth through unified operations, data-led insights and scalable services models.
How is Westcon‑Comstor evolving its go‑to‑market strategy across EMEA to support partners in a rapidly changing technology landscape?
Across EMEA, the scale that distribution provides still matters because partners and vendors need reach, consistency and the ability to execute across multiple markets. But the market has entered an ecosystem era shaped by hyperscaler platforms, marketplaces and co‑selling. That means scale only delivers value when it is paired with orchestration, accountability and a friction‑free experience.
That’s why we’ve moved to a more integrated, unified European sales organisation, bringing our Westcon and Comstor teams together under a single operating model to simplify engagement and deliver a more consistent, scalable partner and vendor experience across the region. Partners benefit from more co-ordinated coverage across technologies, improved visibility of opportunities and a model that balances local responsiveness with the ability to support larger, cross‑border engagements.
In parallel, we are strengthening the practical building blocks that help partners move from one‑off transactions to repeatable lifecycle growth. That starts with a consultative approach to understanding partner specialisms and requirements, connecting partners to the right technologies and relationships, accelerating enablement through structured upskilling and using data and analytics‑led programmes to drive new‑logo pipeline and improve predictability. We then support partners to prove value through pre‑sales services and lab environments, transact through multiple routes including cloud marketplaces, and deliver outcomes through deployment and lifecycle services that support adoption, renewals and expansion.
And because commercial volatility is now a practical reality for the channel in an era of hardware supply constraints, we’re also evolving how quoting is handled. When partners request hardware quotes, we’re working to introduce a clearer set of options earlier in the cycle, including explicit conditions linked to price volatility and delivery times and – where appropriate – SaaS or cloud alternatives. This allows partners to manage risk, protect customer trust and support sustainable lifecycle motions.
Finally, we’re continuing to complement this with data‑led programmes that help partners prioritise effort, identify higher‑propensity opportunities and improve predictability, even when market conditions are moving fast.
The channel is moving rapidly into an ecosystem era characterised by co‑selling, platforms and lifecycle selling. Our role as a distributor is evolving accordingly, from a linear link in a chain to a hub and foundation that aggregates capabilities and orchestrates collaboration across vendors, partners and platforms.
Indeed, it could be argued that our role today is less value-added distributor and more solutions aggregator, growth architect and provider of solutions lifecycle management.
What are the key trends shaping channel growth in EMEA, particularly around cloud, cybersecurity and emerging technologies?
In 2026, growth is shifting rapidly towards platforms, marketplaces and lifecycle‑led selling.
Security buyers continue to consolidate tools into platforms, creating opportunities for partners that differentiate through services, automation and vertical expertise.
Meanwhile, cloud marketplaces are becoming a primary route to market and are increasingly central to enterprise buying and vendor go‑to‑market. With software sales through hyperscaler marketplaces forecast to grow rapidly this decade, and the majority of spend set to flow through the channel by next year, partners can reshape how they package, transact and monetise solutions.
The opportunity is biggest for partners who can turn marketplace access into a repeatable operating model, with standardised, modular offers, services plays and lifecycle renewal motions rather than one‑off deals.
For me, however, the standout growth driver for the channel over the next 12 months will arguably be helping customers navigate the collision of AI adoption, security risk and operational complexity and turning that into repeatable, lifecycle‑led services.
This was a key theme at RSAC earlier this year. It is becoming increasingly clear that 2026 will reward partners who can make AI adoption safe enough to scale in the agentic era through guardrails, governance, trust and accountability.
How are you helping partners transition from traditional resale models to more services‑led and recurring revenue approaches?
Helping partners transition from traditional resale models to more services‑led and recurring revenue approaches is one of our core priorities. Partners understand the need to evolve but execution can be challenging, particularly when they are trying to combine vendor platforms, services and lifecycle delivery into a repeatable model they can scale.
We support this shift in three practical ways. First, by curating a vendor portfolio that lends itself naturally to subscription‑based, land‑and‑expand models, aggregating solutions and technologies to allow partners to win quickly and then build long‑term value through renewals and expansion.
Second, by wrapping technology with enablement, professional services and operational support, from onboarding and training through to renewals management and lifecycle optimisation, so partners have the support they need to capitalise on opportunities.
Third, by enabling partners to transact and scale services‑led offers through SaaS and cloud motions, where recurring revenue, co‑sell motions and services become materially easier to execute at scale. The focus is on removing friction so services‑led growth becomes commercially viable for our partners.
What role does vendor‑partner alignment play in driving successful outcomes across the ecosystem?
Vendor‑partner alignment is foundational. Misalignment creates friction, delays growth and ultimately damages trust in the ecosystem.
Our role is to act as an ecosystem orchestrator and strategic integrator between vendor ambition and partner reality. That means ensuring go‑to‑market priorities, incentives, enablement and operational models are aligned from day one, rather than retrofitted later.
Where this works well, vendors gain faster, more predictable scale across diverse markets while partners get clarity, consistency and confidence in the investments they are making.
This alignment is particularly critical in cloud and security, where platform complexity and fast innovation cycles can otherwise overwhelm execution.
In today’s market, alignment is not just commercial, it’s operational, technical and behavioural.
How is Westcon‑Comstor enabling partners to differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive market?
Differentiation today comes from outcomes rather than access. Most partners can source technology; fewer can deliver consistently strong customer experiences at scale.
We help partners differentiate by giving them access to integrated solutions they can build repeatable offers around, rather than one-off solutions. We also invest heavily in technical enablement, pre-sales expertise and lifecycle services so partners can lead customer conversations with confidence.
We also enable partners to run a more data‑driven lifecycle business through PartnerCentral and Partner Insights, providing a consolidated view of transactional data so partners can spot trends, prioritise effort and manage renewals more proactively.
Tools such as our analytics-led sales programme Intelligent Demand and 3D Lab virtual demo environments help partners identify the right opportunities faster, compete more effectively and shorten sales cycles. And by combining proof‑of‑value support with deployment and support services, we help partners turn confidence in the sale into consistent delivery and long‑term customer success across the lifecycle.
Meanwhile, through our Tech Xpert community, technical channel professionals can exchange ideas and take part in peer‑to‑peer learning in a sales‑free environment, with access to exclusive training and insights that give them a clear competitive advantage.
What opportunities do you see for channel partners in 2026, and how should they prepare to capture them?
The market is moving quickly on AI and the implications are becoming clearer. Security is moving to machine speed, putting trust, governance and identity at the centre. As more organisations explore Agentic AI, the security challenge evolves from securing a single model to securing large numbers of agents embedded in workflows, while bringing non‑human identity into focus. That creates immediate demand and a concrete services opportunity for partners who can put practical guardrails in place through permissions, containment, auditability and recovery, and who can translate AI ambition into controls that are evidence‑based and governable.
Beyond security, AI is also reshaping the infrastructure conversation. Our Future Ready research shows a significant readiness gap: 74% of partners say they cannot yet design and deliver AI‑ready networking solutions, despite strong customer demand. That gap is an opening for partners who invest now in the skills to modernise networks for AI workloads, particularly in high‑growth areas that partners themselves identify, including AI‑enhanced network security analytics (52%) and AI‑powered network observability and diagnostics (48%).
Two other growth drivers sit alongside AI and reinforce the same direction of travel.
First, data‑driven innovation is now a commercial differentiator. Our research found 40% of partners plan to invest in data‑led offerings to unlock new opportunities and increase profitability over the next 12 months, and 26% see data‑driven consulting as the single most promising revenue stream from Digital Transformation. This is where partners can move up the value chain with advisory‑led services that become sticky and recurring.
Second, hybrid IT is embedded as a default operating model and a catalyst for managed services. In our recent research, MSPs highlighted revenue opportunity in cloud migration and ongoing cloud management (23%) and security and threat management (22%), with demand rising for governance‑led services and automation as customers try to improve control and efficiency across mixed estates.
So how should partners prepare and capture these opportunities? In simple terms, build repeatable, data‑driven capabilities around trust, identity and lifecycle delivery.
That means developing structured offers for Agentic AI guardrails and non‑human identity governance, investing in AI‑ready networking capability where the readiness gap is widest, and using data and analytics to target the right customers and prioritise the opportunities most likely to convert.
It also means packaging hybrid complexity – integration, consistent security, governance and compliance – into trusted, high-value managed services that customers can rely on month after month.
