Having platform capabilities will become “table stakes” for distribution, TD Synnex’s CEO asserted as he hinted the world’s largest distributor may look to fortify its capabilities in Eastern Europe.
TD Synnex last week beat market expectations by unveiling a 12% year-on-year rise in gross billings.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen in the wake of the results, CEO Patrick Zammit tackled a range of hot topics, including his quest for greater operational excellence, the ALSO-Westcoast union and the emerging opportunity around AWS Marketplace’s Designated Seller of Record (DSOR) scheme.
Appetite for Eastern European M&A
Swiss ALSO’s recent purchase of UK giant Westcoast will not impact TD Synnex’s strategy in Europe, where it remains the marketshare leader, Zammit indicated.
“We’re still a few billions ahead, but I’ve never been too concerned about the size of the competitors,” he said.
“What’s interesting is that the [ALSO-Westcoast deal] speaks for the need in our industry to scale. That move in fact speaks for us. There are only two distributors who are global today and our customers – especially the larger partners – and vendors are looking for global partners.”
TD Synnex’s Q2 European gross billings soared 13.3% to $6.8bn.
“We continue to consistently gain share in Europe, across the countries,” Zammit said.
“In Eastern Europe if we could expand in endpoint that would be an opportunity – otherwise we are extremely well positioned.”
Platform “table stakes”
2025 has seen TD Synnex arch-rival Ingram Micro strive to reposition itself as a “platform-driven company”, and marketplace Pax8 taking out a full-page New York Times advert to blast the term ‘distribution’.
TD Synnex is investing “millions” in its platform capability, and will make “some nice announcements” on this front “pretty soon”, Zammit said (the NYSE-listed distributor yesterday announced it has acquired cloud commerce platform Apptium to bolster its StreamOne platform).
“But we invest as much, if not more, in our enablement capabilities so that our customers can build their practices and grow by winning at the end users,” he added, however.
“Just like logistics has over time become table stakes, platform will become table stakes. Every large distributor today is investing millions in platform, so at a given point in time I’m not sure it will be differentiating. What will be differentiating is what you do to help your customer grow.”
DSOR ready to soar
AWS Marketplace’s new Designated Seller of Record (DSOR) scheme for distributors is being aggressively embraced by some of TD Synnex’s peers, notably Westcon.
Zammit said he sees hyperscaler marketplaces as a new “go-to-market” rather than disintermediation threat.
“It’s an opportunity for us to grow and even win business which we may have not won in the past,” he said.
“What I appreciate about DSOR is that AWS is providing an environment where, when an end user decides at the end to buy from the platform, the channel – the partner and the distributor – is still is rewarded. So for me, it’s a great opportunity.”
In the wide-ranging interview, Zammit also opened up on the common industry metric he says “can destroy value”, his second-half priorities and technology growth hotspots and the growth of TD Synnex’s “best-kept-secret” Hyve. He also reveals a fact most people don’t know about him.
What did he say? Read on for more.
The full interview begins on the following page….
