The role of technology distributors has shifted from logistics and inventory to becoming strategic enablers in IT resilience, according to Rentia Booysen, director at Westcon-Comstor Southern Africa.
“Distributors now provide strategy, training, configuration, life cycle support and help ensure resilient infrastructure,” Booysen said. “Resilient IT is critical to avoiding costly downtime from outages, breaches or scalability issues.”
Booysen warned that resilience is often mistaken for disaster recovery. “While backup and recovery play a role, true resilience is about infrastructure that is designed to endure and evolve. It involves architectures that can scale on demand, recover automatically, absorb shocks from cyber threats and support the business as it expands into new digital arenas.”
Many IT teams remain reactive, she said, focusing on uptime rather than long-term adaptability. Strategic partnerships can change this mindset. “Strategic IT partners do more than deliver technology – they equip customers to think ahead, anticipate future demands and build resilience into every layer of the infrastructure stack. Why? Because they are doing it themselves.”
For partners navigating hybrid work, edge deployments and complex cloud environments, aligning infrastructure with business goals is key. “That alignment is not just about choosing the right product. It is about understanding how solutions interact within ecosystems, how licensing affects flexibility and how consumption models impact sustainability.”
Central role
Distributors play a central role by offering vendor-accredited training, life cycle services and a broad tech portfolio. But Booysen emphasised the value of local insight: “Compliance, financing and market dynamics often determine whether a solution delivers real value.”
The rise of cloud and intelligent edge has redefined infrastructure. “Partners now need distributors who can orchestrate across multi-vendor, hybrid environments with 24/7 support. It’s a seamless backend role the customer never sees – but always feels.”
As global vendors shift to subscription and service models, the ability to bundle infrastructure, manage renewals and deliver ongoing services has become a key differentiator.
“Resilient infrastructure is not a one-time achievement,” Booysen added. “It must be sustained through proactive maintenance, ongoing optimisation and timely upgrades. Here, life cycle services are essential. They allow partners to extend their offering beyond deployment and generate annuity revenue while keeping customers’ systems performing optimally.”
Looking ahead, Booysen stressed the evolution of the distributor’s role. “What we have had to do internally is embrace the notion that the role of the distributor is no longer about stock and logistics. It is about strategic enablement, technical empowerment and shared accountability. For partners in southern Africa, that means working with an ally who not only understands the region’s realities but who can also anticipate what is coming next.”
The future will reward those who can build for resilience today, not with a single product or platform, but with an entire ecosystem that is robust, agile and ready for whatever comes next, said Booysen.
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