Rob Cato Ready to Lead as NA Chief for Consolidated One Lenovo Channel

A newly consolidated One Lenovo channel organization is in place, now headed in North America by company veteran Rob Cato. The move, which took effect this month, brings together separate channel teams that were dedicated to Lenovo’s different product groups.

Lenovo’s Rob Cato

Cato joined Lenovo as a channel executive in 2008 after nearly 11 years with IBM. Since 2019, Cato has served as channel chief for the vendor’s PC and client devices business in North America.

Lenovo had signaled in June that it would combine the channel organizations dedicated to the company’s different product organizations. The company announced the unification plan under the new Lenovo 360, set to go live in early 2022. Lenovo 360 promises to let partners more easily offer client, devices, data center infrastructure, software and services under one umbrella.

The introduction of Lenovo 360 builds on the company’s reorganization into three business units: Intelligent Devices Group (IDG), consisting of PCs, tablets, meeting room systems and edge devices; Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG), the company’s data center infrastructure equipment; and the Solutions and Services Group (SSG).

While the company’s Motorola subsidiary is not part of any of those groups, executives say they work together. The Lenovo 360 framework is a global partner program with the new Lenovo Partner Hub as its foundation. That’s a revamped portal launched last year that offers personalized and real-time sales tools, enablement and other resources.

Lenovo 360 Strategy

Lenovo’s Pascal Bourget

Global channel chief Pascal Bourguet in June revealed the Lenovo 360 strategy.

“The entire notion of this new global framework is to create an existing business that not only allows you to sell PC services and data center, it empowers you to provide additional solutions,” he said at the time. “We’re providing you the new solutions enablement and access to training to ensure that you have all the decisions.”

Lenovo’s Steve Biondi

Under the new structure in North America, Cato reports to senior VP Vladimir Rozanovich. Steve Biondi, who oversaw data center solutions, in now executive director of that ISG cannels group. Biondi continues to report to Wilfredo Sotolongo and indirectly to Cato.

Channel Futures spoke to Cato and Biondi together about the implications of the consolidated channel programs to North American partners. Excerpts from that interview, with minor edits for clarity, are in the slideshow above.