Westcon-Comstor Sub-Saharan Africa is emphasising reseller development, enablement and empowerment, by providing nine of its SMME Cisco partners across Africa the opportunity to showcase their businesses and services at the upcoming Cisco Connect event by way of the "SMME powered by Comstor" initiative.

The partners will be given a platform to present their business, sales proposition, go-to-market strategy and core competencies to approximately 900 business decision makers at Cisco Connect, set to be held from 19-21 May at Sun City, South Africa.

"Our focus is to grow and nurture developing resellers across the African continent by providing sponsorships and funding, usually only afforded to enterprise-scale partners with extensive marketing budgets," says Ivaniza Correia de Araujo, Field Marketing Lead at Comstor Southern Africa. "The nine SMME partners have been handpicked by our Westcon-Comstor executives on the merit of their business value-proposition and focus on Cisco as their vendor of choice."

The Weston-Comstor team has developed an end-to-end experience at Cisco Connect where our partners will be able to exhibit their businesses alongside the "Powered by Comstor" banner. Each partner brings a unique set of services and value proposition around the full spectrum of Cisco services and architectures, that they bundled with their own value-added services. This affords our SMME partners the chance to highlight how they can help IT decision makers achieve their business goals.

Everything has been arranged for the partners, from their stand design, to the nature of their branded giveaways, promotional materials and collateral.

According to Correia de Araujo the team has taken care to work with each company to ensure that they convey their brand, business and services to a global standard. The exhibit will include a series of experiential engagements and elements that will lead a customer on a journey through the partner's stands – ensuring each one gets exposure to the customers and business decision makers attending the event.

The SMME powered by Comstor partners include:

A2D24 – South Africa
Next Hope - Madagascar
Birger - Indian Ocean Islands (IOI) and East Africa
Eastra Solutions Ltd - Kenya
Ekwantu Consulting – South Africa
Makwa IT – South Africa
ProComm - Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia and South Africa
Vumela IT – South Africa
GenBand Africa – South Africa

"The SMME powered by Comstor initiative forms part of the Westcon-Comstor SA objectives around Corporate Social Investment, Skills Development and Equal Opportunities for previously disadvantaged individuals. Our promise to our SMME partners is that as their value-added distributor we commit to being hands on in the development of their business, and where possible we will do the heavy lifting for them. As a result, our smaller partners become part of the Westcon-Comstor family, they embrace and apply our EDGE philosophy in the market and grow into successful businesses within the Cisco marketplace," ends Correia de Araujo.