Who are the century’s greatest vendor leaders, in the eyes of the channel?
The simplest way to answer this question is by putting it out to the channel itself, which is exactly what IT Channel Oxygen did.
In late June and early July, we contacted 60 top UK industry leaders, asking them to nominate their top five choices, in rank order.
We instructed them that the leaders they were putting forward must have held a Founder, CEO or other C-suite post at a vendor some time during the 21st century. They could either be from the past or the present.
They were invited to consider five factors when casting their votes, namely:
- Financial success and technology leadership
- Leadership qualities
- The culture instilled
- Longevity and stability
- Channel advocacy
Who was involved?
Those involved include leaders from Softcat, Computacenter, CDW, Bytes Technology Group, SCC, Bell Integration, Daisy, CCS Media, boxxe, Ultima and Six Degrees, as well as representatives from analysts including Canalys, Omdia, TechMarketView and Quocirca (see bottom for full list).
We would consider the channel leaders involved in this project broadly representative of the mainstream UK IT channel.
34 hold senior executive leadership positions at top resellers and MSPs, and seven at distributors. The remainder were a blend of analysts, marketing experts, channel services leaders, non-execs or well-respected independent experts.
In order to avoid betraying any confidences, we have not revealed who they nominated, or in what order (beyond where they have chosen separately to speak up for one or more of their choices).
Some 30 of those nominating were women, and 30 men.
We also encouraged them to include female CEOs and leaders from underrepresented groups in their nominations to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in leadership.
The results are based solely on these 60 channel leaders’ votes, which were worth between one and five points depending on their rank orders. In the event that two vendor leaders accumulated equal points, we split them based on the number of nominations received.
The result is The Channel’s Top 30 Vendor Leaders, Powered By QBS Software. See Part One of the countdown here.
We hope you enjoy reading this crowdsourced project as much as we enjoyed compiling it.
Thanks to all our panellists who took the time out to be part of this first-of-its-kind project:
Dave Stevinson, CEO, QBS Technology Group
Margaret Adam, Head of Product Marketing, Channel Mechanics
Craig Aston, COO, Celerity
Rye Austin, CCO, Core Technology Systems
Laura Bouchard, Non-Executive Director, CloudKubed
Rachel Brindley, Senior Director of Channels, Canalys
Colin Brown, Non-Executive Director, Advania UK
Graham Charlton, CEO, Softcat
Lyndsey Charlton, COO, Daisy Corporate Services
Michelle Cope, Sales Director, Trustco
Justine Cross, Managing Director, EMEA Channels
Annette Cunningham, Experienced Sales Leader and former TD Synnex VP Sales UK&I
Anushka Davies, Head of Employee Engagement, Diversity & Inclusion, Softcat
Scott Dodds, CEO, Ultima
Vince DeLuca, CEO, Six Degrees
Phil Doye, CEO, boxxe
Brian Dunleavy, CCO, Viadex
Louella Fernandez, CEO, Quocirca
Chris Gabriel, Chief Marketing Officer and VP of Innovation – UK Executive, NTT Data Business Solutions
Manpreet Gill, CEO, Bell Integration
Mukesh Gupta, CEO, e92plus
Kate Hanaghan, Partner & Chief Research Officer, TechMarketView
James Hardy, Group CCO, CCS Media
Joey Hemingbrough, Sales Director, Velocity Consulting
Martin Hellawell, Chair at Raspberry Pi Limited, Gamma Communications PLC and musicMagpie PLC
Gill Holloway, EMEA Vice President – Partnerships, Insight
Maxine Holt, Senior Director, Research & Content, Omdia
JD Hupp, Managing Director, CDW UK and International
Ben Jackson, CEO, Titan Data Solutions
Rene Klein, Executive Vice President Westcon Europe
Yvonne Matzk, Founder, Coachere
Fiona McKenzie, CEO, Revere Agency
Karen McLoughlin, senior vice president, EMEA services and global CoE, Insight
Rupert Mills, Director, Krome Technologies
Hayley Mooney, CCO Bytes Software Services
Sam Mudd, CEO, Bytes Technology Group
Kieran O’Connor, Sales Director, Total Computers
Clare Parry-Jones, Sales Enablement Director, Europe & Sustainability Champion, Computacenter
Robert Pooley, Solutions Director & Co-Founder, Saepio Information Security
Anna Pulisciano, Operations Director, Softcat
Steve Rigby, Co-CEO, SCC
Jenni Riley, Co-Founder, ITARMI
Hayley Roberts, CEO, Distology
Alastair Rudman, UK CEO, Natilik
Nicola Saner, MD, Chorus
Paul Shannon, Co CEO & Founder, OBT Live
Sarah Shields, Head of Vendor Alliances, Computacenter
Julie Simpson, CEO, ResourceiT Consulting
Alex Smith, Vice President of Channels, Canalys
Paul Starr, CEO, SEP2
Marion Stewart, CEO, Red Helix
Alex Tatham, former Executive Director, Westcoast
Ross Teague, CEO, Nebula Global Services
Gemma Telford, Founder, SheHer
Rob Tomlin, Managing Director, Exclusive Networks UK
Richard Tubb, IT Business Growth Expert, Tubblog
Larry Walsh, CEO and Chief Analyst, Channelnomics
Angela Whitty, CEO, Ampito
Dr Colin Williams, Business CTO Computacenter UK (Networking & Security), Computacenter
Penny Williams, Vice President of Sales, CDW UK
