TD Synnex sales boss Phil Brown has picked out NVIDIA as a key emerging vendor for the distributor as he opened up on its SMB growth push.
Brown joined TD Synnex – which ranked second in the recent Oxygen Must-Know Distributors 2024 – as VP Sales, UK & Ireland on 1 September after nearly three years at SCC.
The former Exertis bigwig said he had spent “most of his time” in his first eight months with TD Synnex’s SMB teams.
“Sometimes there’s a perception that, because of our size, we’re set up to look after the large customers,” he told IT Channel Oxygen.
“Of course, we do that – and I think we do that pretty well – but in reality the tools we have and a lot of the investment in people and time is actually about working with our SMB customers. So I’ve been driving an SMB growth initiative that kicked off in October last year.”
NVIDIA in vogue
TD Synnex is “doubling down with certain vendors” in an effort to boost growth, Brown said.
Asked to specify which vendors, Brown was reluctant to name-check anyone beyond NVIDIA, which he said the broadliner now sees as a “vendor in their own right”.
“I’ll say [NVIDIA] because it won’t offend anyone – they work with everyone,” Brown said of the world’s third most-valuable company.
“Although they’re partnering with a number of OEMs, we’re also working with them as an independent vendor, giving them access to our salespeople and driving training.
“That’s certainly a vendor we are working really closely with and see huge opportunity in collaborating with and selling with in the future.”
Palo Alto Networks is also a “big focus” after the duo inked a pan-European pact in December 2023, Brown added.
Windows 11 ramp up
TD Synnex’s recent fiscal Q1 results, covering the period to 28 February 2025, brought evidence that Windows 11 refresh is finally biting, with CEO Patrick Zammit hailing “very strong high-single digit growth in PCs”.
Brown picked out Windows 11 refresh, alongside AI, as his two 2025 growth bets.
“There was a little bit of nervousness at the tail end of last calendar year that we weren’t really seeing the uptake,” Brown said of the former.
“In calendar Q1 we really started to see the uptick, and certainly in March we really saw that begin to ramp up and have seen that continue into April.
“I think it’ll ramp up as you go through education spend in the summer and race towards October, because people have realised that October is only six months away now.
“Microsoft has selected a number of the larger partners they’re working directly with. Our job is to then get that message out to as many partners as possible.”
“That mix differentiates us from the others”
Reflecting on his first eight months in the role, Brown picked out strengthening TD Synnex’s SMB team as his biggest achievement to date.
“We’ve changed the way we look at recruiting and are improving the experience levels in that team,” he said.
“We’re spending a lot more time training them, communicating with them, working with them, and making them feel that SMB is a really important place to be.”
What does Brown say to resellers who see TD Synnex and the other big distributors as much of a muchness?
“We’re a large organisation, but I think we have the ability to cater for customers of all shapes and sizes,” he responded.
“We can support the large customers exceptionally well through our scale and size. But I also think we can support smaller customers through our digital tools and we’ve got a workforce and a sales team that is really looking to support them as much as possible.
“That mix of the digital footprint, our e-commerce platform, our tools to help customers, and our sales colleagues, would probably differentiate us from the others.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
