Channel Futures' Top Distribution Leaders for 2024

Despite the many differences between technology distribution companies, these firms and their leaders all agree on one thing: Channel partners are demanding a new level of service and support as they adopt more complex technologies.

Channel Futures is back with its annual list of top leaders in the B2B tech distribution space. Here are 16 leaders who have built a body of work in their companies and in the industry and will play influential roles in a sure-to-be-exciting 2025. Every distribution company and their mother is building programs for AI, the platforms race is in full flight, and the relationship between distribution and marketplaces remains a potent question.

The 16 companies represented in this list do not all fit the conventional bill of an IT distributor. When Warren Buffett reminisced about a past attempt to buy Tech Data, he was talking about a broadline distributor — the type of large company most associated with the term "disti."

But broadline distributors such as TD Synnex and Ingram Micro are not the only companies on this list; nor are they the template any more. The broadliners themselves are working to reinvent themselves with a value props of automation and advanced technologies.

Joining this list are boutique, or niche, providers. That includes small companies that are choosing to focus on a select set of vendors, or perhaps a non-U.S. company seeking to make inroads into North America.

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Channel Futures also closely covers the tech services distributors (TSDs), formerly known as master agents. Some people prefer to call these companies brokerages, because their business works on sales commissions rather than resale. Yet these companies, just like the VADs, are "market-makers," connecting suppliers to sales partners, matchmaking, educating and enabling.

Also falling into our wider umbrella of distribution – perhaps with even more controversy – are the cloud marketplaces. Many of these companies are avoiding the distributor designation. A notable marketplace CEO pushed back on the idea that a marketplace equals distribution. One marketplace has signed deals with broadline distributors with the idea that its platform could actually enable a disti's transaction. And similarly, a disti is touting its partnerships with hyperscaler marketplaces. But whether or not market places equal distribution, their worlds are coming together in some way.

Channel Futures is highlighting 16 executives, profiling their career backgrounds and accomplishments and soliciting their insights on the year to come. The Channel Futures Top Distribution Leaders list is in alphabetical order; check it out in the slideshow above.

Related:Channel Futures' Top Cloud Leaders of 2024

Check out our other Leaders lists for 2024: