Channel vet Mark Walker is to front Irish wholesaler Commtech Distribution's expansion into the UK.

Walker was made redundant by Azlan, enterprise arm of broadline distie Computer 2000 in November as part of a structural overhaul, which also saw the exit of marketing director Simon Welch and the entire Avaya business unit.

A mouthpiece for privately owned Commtech confirmed plans to set up a UK hub are under way and that Walker will spearhead the push, but was unable to comment further.

The storage, security and virtualisation specialist will face a bunch of well-established competitors in the UK, many of whom Walker has previously worked with.

Walker was poached by Azlan from Avnet, where he ran the storage product business for Europe. Prior to that he was a director an enterprise distie Horizon and before that he was EMEA director of open storage at Bell Micro.

Walker was unavailable for comment. ®