TechSelect: TD Synnex Recruiting Next-Gen Vendors for Latest Partner Solutions
Next-gen vendors may have great technology, but aren't necessarily channel-ready.
![TechSelect registration TechSelect registration](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/bltd8b85bb5b08c9664/65242b4acbc8316fe23ad274/TDS2.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Channel Futures: During his keynote, Sami Kinlaw, TD Synnex’s senior vice president of sales communities for North America, talked about all the growth that’s taken place since the start of the year. Can you elaborate on that from the vendor and reseller perspective?
Cheryl Neal: So within my realm, I’m looking at new next-gen vendors. And some of the first things we do when we’re looking at those next-gen vendors are, one, are they channel ready? How do they align with some of the vendors that are already on our line card? And in fact, some of the vendors are the ones that recommend them because it’s a good alliance and building out the solution aggregation that we’re focused on. We want to help get in early in that bell curve, bringing in some of that next-gen, the analytics, data, IoT and augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR). They’re not mature markets yet. So we’re building out programs and helping them because we know it’s a heavy lift for our partners to take on a new vendor. We’re doing everything we can to make sure that we simplify that process. So that’s where we’re focused on, the growth.
And then, my other hat is building that out. I have regular meetings with all of my co-workers globally where we’re making sure that we’re all communicating and acting as one organization. Because as you can imagine, being so large, it’s really important that we support our VAR that works here if they want to set up a location in India, that we can help them do that. And so that’s where my growth is focused and that’s part of our global strategy, building out that end-to-end portfolio.
Kristi Kirby: I would just say from a growth perspective, it’s been an explosion. We’ve seen double-digit growth in almost every technology segment we’ve had. So demand is extremely high. We all saw the explosion of education, and government spending is on fire. So we’re really seeing growth from every segment, if you will. And the interesting thing is we’re seeing it across every technology spectrum. I’ve been doing this for a long time, but I’m not sure that I could have ever said we’ve seen it explode truly end to end. But we have. So whether it’s devices, the compute behind all those devices, whether it’s the full infrastructure, obviously everything’s going through the cloud now, and now with everybody being hybrid, security is huge. And I think you’re going to see demand remain very, very strong. I think the big question mark is going to be supply chain. I think everybody is on their own journey with supply chain right now.
CF: Besides supply chain, are there other issues and challenges that vendors are facing, therefore affecting partners?
Neal: One is helping them become more channel-ready. We have programs to help them with that. And really that’s a win for them and it’s also a win for our customer, our partners. That really helps because they have this awesome technology, they’re great engineers and all of that. But it can be a challenge to be channel-ready and efficient and operationally ready. Also, a lot of vendors are looking to get out of the hardware market, and being that true solutions aggregator, we can actually do the meet-in-the-channel type solutions. And that’s been a huge help to a lot of these vendors. They want to focus on the software where they’re really strong and then they can leverage our capabilities around the hardware.
In addition, they all want to be global, and they don’t have that capability, but we do. And in fact, we have capabilities where they can actually outsource to us and we can be their channel for them if they’re not quite ready to maybe go into Latin America. So it’s some pretty big capabilities that we can help them with and really help them get up to speed. At the end of the day, it’s all about building that solution, and we need a lot of those smaller vendors to kind of round out those solutions.
Kirby: I think talent retention and talent acquisition are probably top of mind for everyone. The technology industry is not any more immune to that than the financial services industry or really any other industry. So that’s definitely one of them.
And I think there’s also just continuing to find resources to cover and scale the market opportunity that’s before us. Like we mentioned, this explosion that’s before us right now has been something that they’ve struggled with to find people, train people and just have enough bodies. But I think, again, that’s where we come in and we play a big, important role to them. Both Tech Data and Synnex uniquely played a role to them and I think did a great job. If you put the power of those two companies together, the coverage model that we can offer any vendor, whether it’s covering any vertical, partner type, solution type or region, we can help scale the way we’ve never been able to scale before.
CF: Cybersecurity is in massive demand with the constant headlines of ransomware and other attacks. From a vendor perspective, how is TD Synnex providing what resellers and other partners need to protect themselves and their customers?
Neal: That’s a really important area and a big focus of ours while recruiting new vendors, because there are a lot of them out there and it’s not just one security solution that is the be-all and end-all. So you have to have that portfolio of vendors to support. In addition, there are multiple, even in the SMB market. They have multiple security vendors on their line, or within their shop and their data center. And the larger organizations have even more than that. So we’re doing a lot of vetting and making sure that we’re bringing on the best of the best. And again, how does it fit with our line card that we have today and how does it complement what we’re doing?
In addition, we’re leveraging our Cyber Range. The talent shortage is really high in this area, so how can we enable more people to understand the technology and really come out of there, and support our partners and vendors? That’s a huge focus. So doubling down with the vendors we already have, educating and enabling, and then looking for that new security vendor is really important to us.
Kirby: Whether you’re leading any conversation with anybody around which solution you’re going to offer, that’s a really large part of the conversation. But I think we’ve been fortunate because we’ve been able … to build all these security practices. And with our security practice builder, we’ve had all those conversations and we’ve had most of our co-workers go through that training that they’ve been able to bring that knowledge into the conversation, but also apply that knowledge to whatever specific sale they’re in with whatever specific partner supporting that specific vertical.
CF: What has having TechSelect as a in-person event meant to you? Are you recruiting, receiving feedback, etc.?
Neal: So a little bit of all of the above. Being able to be live and in-person with our customers, the partners as well as our vendors, that’s really fun and it’s in my backyard. So it’s awesome. I think my biggest hope is that if I can speak to the customers both on stage as well as just the one-on-one conversations, understand what their needs are, and as it relates to whether it’s my part of the business or any part of the business, how can we enable them? If we can help them grow and help them succeed … and identifying the things where we could help them and applying that is my biggest hope.
Kirby: Networking with our partners live for the first time in quite awhile has been an awesome focus. You don’t get the same amount of conversation when you’re on the phone or over video. So just seeing people in person I think has been great. Of course, making sure from a vendor perspective that they’re able to leverage this platform and get their messages out there because I think there’s a lot that the vendors have to say about the last two years and about how things have changed. And I think as a partner, trying to consume all that information in one consolidated event — there’s a real benefit to that.
I’ve met new partners and welcomed new partners to the community. We’ve been actively recruiting new partners to join the community and also making sure not just that our existing members who have been around a little bit are having a great time, but also putting extra special emphasis on our new partners, too. I think it’s really important that they feel welcome and that they understand the benefits of the community. But for all partners here, we’re really ambassadors of TD Synnex, making sure that they understand how the offerings have evolved and all the ways that we’re doing. Through CommunitySolv, we are really evolving the way we bring these communities to market. And really who stands to benefit the most is the partners. They pay to be part of these communities. They invest in us, and we want to make sure that we’re investing in them wholeheartedly and that they’re benefiting from that.
CF: What are you anticipating the rest of the year will like in terms of everything that you do in TD Synnex?
Neal: I’ve been in this industry a long time and I can say I have never been bored, but especially now I’m not bored. The solution aggregation is going to be even more important. How do we create those business outcomes? How do we make it consumable? With the new vendors that are coming in, how do we package those up with our click-to-run solutions or through our solutions factory? How
do we make that very channel consumable, make it easy for our partners and easy to consume for the end users that really provide the outcomes that they’re looking for? So really continuing our focus there. Also, continuing our global strategies around building out that end-to-end portfolio. So nothing major as far as know, but it’s doubling down where we’re already focused.
Kirby: You’re going to see us continue to focus on investing in our people. That’s really important. You’re going to see us continue to focus on investing in capabilities. Digital transformation is still the core of our strategy. We have to be easier to do business with and make business easier to do, period, for everyone. And I think we play a really big role there.
We’re going to be focused on combining our … capabilities, and we’re well underway and ahead of schedule, which is great. So that’s a huge focus and one that we’re really excited about. We’re in this amazing time in the center of a merger, which allows you to really redefine your future. And I think that’s super exciting because at the heart of that, investing in our people, investing in our systems, investing in our tools, and being out there and listening is how can we take the power that is TD Synnex and bring that forth in a way that’s the most meaningful to the partners on the end of that.
Also at TechSelect, Rob Cato, Lenovo’s vice president of North America channel business, took the stage to talk about his company’s record growth with TD Synnex and the channel.
Lenovo saw 25% year-over-year SMB growth with “great support” from partners, he said. It also saw 60% growth in managed services.
“This is a testament to the partnership we have together,” Cato said. “We couldn’t have achieved these without your help, partners across America.”
Lenovo with TD Synnex is a $3 billion business with 21% year-over-year growth year with the support of TD Synnex’s team, he said.
“One of the reasons for success is alignment between Lenovo and TD Synnex,” Cato said. “We’re both global tech companies making sure to execute on a local level.”
Lenovo’s Intelligent Devices Group (IDG) is “going strong” with record growth in the past year, he said.
In the coming months, Lenovo will accelerate strategic initiatives, and increase its “depth and breadth” with its partners, Cato said.
Jessica McDowell, TD Synnex’s vice president of business development, security and networking, led a panel discussion on latest cybersecurity topics with Joel Byrd, Fortinet‘s director of SMB solutions and marketing, and Michael Williams, distribution account manager at Veeam.
Byrd said a lack of automation integration is making organizations easy targets for cybercriminals. Doing so will simplify operations. In addition, working with fewer vendors helps. Cybercriminals love when organizations work with several vendors that don’t talk to each other.
Williams said another problem is organizations buying the technology they need, but not using it to its full potential. Also, a lot of organizations don’t look at the terms and conditions when moving to cloud, not realizing that there is shared responsibility for data.
The months ahead will bring continued expansion of platforms, and ransomware, malware and other attacks will grow, he said.
“Customers need to be prepared and work with solution partners, and have a plan to recover,” Williams said.
In his keynote, Bob Kalka, vice president of IBM’s security business unit, talked about three trends that are driving the future of cybersecurity. Those are zero trust, threat management and modernizing.
“Zero trust is white hot,” he said. “The concept has been around for over a decade: Never trust, always verify. Nobody cared about the concept until about three years ago. The real reason it has exploded is … hybrid cloud. It exposes every cyber elephant that’s been in their room all these years.”
Threat management is “how do you run security in your shop,” Kalka said. It involves finding the needle in a haystack, confirm and fix. However, it’s more like “finding needles in a needle stack.” The world is full of underdeployed tools that can handle this properly.
As for modernizing, in many cases security teams think keeping up with an organization’s modernization and digital transformation is to “pedal faster,” he said. The key is to also modernize how security is handled.
“Every one of those things is an opportunity for us to work together,” he said.
Sam Reynolds, president of Network Technology Solutions, said he’s been a TechSelect member for 10 years.
“Mainly what I get out of it is the engagement with other partners, vendors as well, but mainly the growth between the partners and how we see businesses and work differently with other businesses,” he said. “It’s an interesting concept to see what they do. How they do it versus how I do things? And the merger between Tech Data and Synnex, I’m still getting used to it so I don’t have a lot of information on it yet. But it looks like it’s going to be a good fit because Synnex did things that Tech Data didn’t.”
Network Technology Solutions has experienced the same growth as TD Synnex, Reynolds said.
“Over the past two years, we’ve grown dramatically, and one year we grew 40%,” he said. “It’s great to see the growth. If we could just get the supply chain fixed, that would be even better. The only thing that would help us would be the supply chain. That’s the biggest fix. And TD Synnex being the distributor, if they can get product from the vendors, that would be the best thing.”
Christine Feddern, vice president of Solid IT Networks, said her company has been a TechSelect member for about seven years. It’s also a member of the Varnex community.
“Utilizing both of them has been helpful for us,” she said. “What I like the best is the collaboration, having private conversations that you know aren’t going to go anywhere. For instance, with COVID-19, what’s happening, what’s successful for you and what isn’t working, can I borrow something from you, like a person or some knowledge.”
Aside from trying to figure everything out, the conversations about the merger have been “pretty open and I appreciate that,” Feddern said.
“That has been helpful in trying to maneuver and understand what’s going on in the background,” she said.
The growth taking place is “incredible,” Feddern said.
“And it’s encouraging because I know there area lot of businesses, especially smaller businesses, that just haven’t made it these last few years,” she said. “They just didn’t have the depth or breadth to make it. So to listen to this has been great.”
Christine Feddern, vice president of Solid IT Networks, said her company has been a TechSelect member for about seven years. It’s also a member of the Varnex community.
“Utilizing both of them has been helpful for us,” she said. “What I like the best is the collaboration, having private conversations that you know aren’t going to go anywhere. For instance, with COVID-19, what’s happening, what’s successful for you and what isn’t working, can I borrow something from you, like a person or some knowledge.”
Aside from trying to figure everything out, the conversations about the merger have been “pretty open and I appreciate that,” Feddern said.
“That has been helpful in trying to maneuver and understand what’s going on in the background,” she said.
The growth taking place is “incredible,” Feddern said.
“And it’s encouraging because I know there area lot of businesses, especially smaller businesses, that just haven’t made it these last few years,” she said. “They just didn’t have the depth or breadth to make it. So to listen to this has been great.”
TD SYNNEX TECHSELECT — TD Synnex is focused on attracting next-generation vendors to foster more growth and expansion opportunities among partners.
That’s according to Cheryl Neal, TD Synnex’s vice president of new vendor acquisition, and Kristi Kirby, TD Synnex’s vice president of vendor management, edge solutions. Both were longtime Tech Data vets before last fall’s $7.2 billion mega-merger of Synnex and Tech Data to form TD Synnex.
Neal and Kirby are among numerous TD Synnex channel executives at this week’s TechSelect Spring 2022 conference in Phoenix. TD Synnex’s three partner communities logged year-over-year growth in the second quarter. In addition, more than 50 new members have joined the communities so far this year.
Bigger Organization with More Resources
In a Q&A with Channel Futures, Neal and Kirby talk about their experiences since the merger. They also talk about how new TD Synnex vendors are driving explosive growth.
Channel Futures: Both of you had long histories with Tech Data before the merger. How have your roles changed since becoming part of TD Synnex?
TD Synnex’s Cheryl Neal
Cheryl Neal: I’m really fortunate because when we merged, immediately I had a team that was from both legacy organizations. So immediately I had those connections of who to go to and what our capabilities are. And so my role hasn’t necessarily changed as just grown and expanded. I’m responsible for new vendor acquisition and there was new vendor acquisition on the legacy Synnex side. But now it’s a bigger organization. We have more resources and we’re bringing the best practices together.
The other part of it was our global solutions, where we’re working with the multinational companies and now we have the expanded geographic coverage. As an example, at legacy Tech Data, we did not have Japan. And now with Synnex, we have Japan. So we have big capabilities now. But I’m really fortunate having co-workers that came from both organizations. I knew who to go to, my team was working really well together and I feel like we jelled immediately.
TD Synnex’s Kristi Kirby
Kristi Kirby: I’ve had various responsibilities within our vendor management or product management segments over time. So as part of that, obviously there were some overlap lines and there were some lines that didn’t overlap within the division. So we did some shifting around of some line responsibilities among both the team at Synnex and Tech Data to really optimize the coverage model. And then from there, also being a legacy Tech Data employee with endpoint solutions, I’ve been able to focus on integration within the systems.
We’re going through an enterprise resource planning (ERP) integration. So just focusing on building a team, combining the cultures, combining the teams and of course at the heart of that is no disruption to our business, only enhancing it. And we have all these new capabilities. There are great capabilities, but there’s not that much overlap, which has been awesome for us because we’re going to be able to bring things different to our partners. There’s been also a lot of learning quickly for us to figure out what those capabilities are and how we can best put them in the market in the speediest way.
See our slideshow above for more from Neal and Kirby, and more from day two of TechSelect 2022.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Edward Gately or connect with him on LinkedIn. |
About the Author(s)
You May Also Like