Monday Morning Impact – March 9

Published On: March 9, 2015Categories: Buzz, Uncategorized

By Ken Presti, Senior Consultant, Channel Impact

Tech Data Introduces Mobility Solutions and Retail Division

Tech Data Corporation has announced a new mobility solutions and retail division, to be led by Patrick Stokes, who has been promoted to senior vice president. The company’s consumer technology sales team, which was formerly part of the Integrated Supply Chain Solutions (ISCS) division, will also move into the new division. Meanwhile, Shaun Sinden has been promoted to vice president and general manager of ISCS Americas.

“Combining our mobile and retail businesses under dedicated leadership and placing a laser focus on our supply chain initiatives is a natural evolution that better aligns our resources with the market landscape,” said Joe Quaglia, Americas president at Tech Data. “These organizational changes, designed to better serve our vendor partners, solution providers, and retail partners while accelerating our growth in these important segments, will provide a heightened focus on each market with a clearer alignment for our channel partners.”

A 24-year veteran of the mobile telecommunications industry, Stokes joined Tech Data in July of last year as vice president of mobile solutions. He previously served as president/COO at Brightstar, and held senior executive roles in sales, distribution, and M&A with Verizon and Sprint.

Sinden joined Tech Data in October 2010, most recently serving as vice president of consumer technology and integrated supply chain services. Prior to joining Tech Data, Sinden served as senior director of key global accounts at Arvato Services, as well as several additional leadership positions within the IT distribution and outsourced supply chain industries.

Channel Impact:
The move underscores a growing focus on two key market areas that are increasingly gaining importance at the Clearwater, Fla.-based distributor.

Global Convergence Unveils XaaS Tool for Channel Partners

Global Convergence, Inc., a Florida-based value-added distributor, has launched “IT nFusion,” a new Anything-as-a-Service (XaaS) offering designed to optimize and reduce IT expenditures by leveraging pooled resources for professional and managed services integrated with hardware, software, or licensing components into a single platform with an operational expense payment structure.

“IT nFusion offers a great foundation for our solution providers to build or extend their geographic footprint and engage in larger bid opportunities that include incremental and recurring services revenue while enhancing their competitive differentiation and overall value as a business partner for their customer base,” said John Keenan, senior vice president of solutions development at Global Convergence. “This in turn will support ongoing customer satisfaction to enable the next sale.”

The new model essentially rolls up multiple elements of hardware, software, licensing, professional services, managed services and even manufacturer maintenance and support plans together with skilled resource localization and dynamic sourcing with an operational vs capital expense structure.

IT nFusion offers a variable cost resource model with on-demand logistics and technical support to satisfy essential customer product and service requirements regardless of the IT solution and specialty or niche technology skill needed. Solution providers can enter or expand their existing portfolio offerings with managed or professional services without capital investment to meet the growing demand for businesses to access next generation technology and managed services on a monthly subscription basis.

Channel Impact:
The offering promises to be a solid means of increasing efficiencies at the channel level which, when done well, is always beneficial.

Ingram Micro Appoints Anthony Vottima to Lead U.S. Vertical Market Initiative

Ingram Micro has named Anthony Vottima as its new executive director and general manager of its vertical markets business, targeting education, federal, finance, healthcare, retail and state/local government. Vottima brings more than 26 years of channel and vertical market experience to Ingram Micro, and previously served as the senior vice president of Avnet.

“We are investing in these five areas to generate greater business value and accelerate success for our channel partners and vendors who specialize in these verticals and others who want to build business practices within one or more of these high opportunity markets,” said Kirk Robinson, senior vice president, Commercial and Global Markets, Ingram Micro. “Under Tony’s guidance, we will extend our vertical market leadership within the IT channel and further enable channel partners with the insight, resources and technology to be a more strategic technical and business advisor to organizations within these growing markets.”

The Santa Ana, Calif.-based distributor is also expanding its team to support the company’s vertical markets emphasis. Among its plans, Ingram Micro intends to debut a new healthcare community, as well as launch a series of education tracks and enablement resources that will build expertise and accelerate time-to-market for channel partners.

Channel Impact:
As the market emphasis continues to focus on the need for solutions, a solid understanding of targeted key verticals becomes increasingly important to channel partners. Ingram Micro’s vertical strategy is designed to leverage that dynamic and helped allied channel partners differentiate and succeed in several key verticals; a move that is based on solid logic.

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