New Tech Data Americas President: Watch for Triple Play

Is Tech Data‘s (TECD) Joe Quaglia a strategic leader or operational expert? Let’s go with “both.” Quaglia, recently promoted to president, the Americas, sees the opportunity for a technology industry triple play. Here’s why.

“At the end of the day, our success is all about our employees, our vendor partnerships and our customer partnerships,” Quaglia recently told The VAR Guy. “Continuing to invest in all three will serve us well today and in the future.”

Looking Back, And Ahead

Quaglia, a CA Technologies veteran, joined Tech Data in 2006 as VP, east and government sales. He rose rapidly to VP, U.S. marketing in 2007. By February 2012, he took on the additional role of president, TDMobility — Tech Data’s mobility initiative for VARs. Now, he jumps to the president, Americas post.

During most of our conversation, Quaglia put the spotlight on Tech Data’s employee base — including leaders across the mobile and cloud businesses. But when quizzed, Quaglia opened up a bit about his own management style and the road ahead.

When it comes to strategic vision vs. day-to-day execution, “both parts are just as important,” said Quaglia. “We have to have the vision to evolve with the IT ecosystem as fast as possible. My background here the past six years puts us in good position to capitalize on new opportunities as they come along. We’ve inclubated and built the cloud and mobility services…And the execution and operational responsibility — delivering on those launches — has been equally important.”

A few examples: TDCloud, which empowers VARs to sell storage, security and other cloud services, now has more than 3,000 resellers transacting on a quarterly basis — and that figure continues to increase, Quaglia said. The effort has been led by Bharath Natarajan, reporting in to VP Stacy Nethercoat.

Cloud, Mobile Converge

Longer term, watch for synergies between TDMobility (driven by Heather Murray) and TDCloud to continually increase, while Tech Data continues to increase investments in the company’s underlying StreamOne technology. “The ability to see and provision products and services from a common platform will set us apart,” he asserts.

Quaglia also continues to emphasize Tech Data’s data center business, where partners are converging servers, storage and networking. “We’re in the early innings of a nine-inning baseball game. I see that evolving and growing. The ability to put a converged infrastructure in place will have a big ROI.”

Healthy Competition

Still, competition looms on numerous fronts. Rivals such as Avnet, Arrow, Ingram Micro and Synnex also have momentum in multiple markets. Ingram Micro Cloud, for instance, is a widely used cloud aggregation service. Avnet Technology Solutions has deep relationships with Cisco, IBM, HP and others. The ArrowSphere market place is growing. And Synnex has been innovating on the cloud and mobile fronts, with such offerings as PromoCentral.

All that said, Tech Data shares are trading near a five-year high as the company continues to invest in employees, vendor partnerships and customer partnerships with the evolving IT channel. Or as Quaglia puts it: Tech Data will continue to turn a market triple play.