Mike Norris has opened up on what drives him as Computacenter CEO as he approaches 30 years in the role, revealing “I get a kick out of building it and want to do it for as long as I can”.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, Norris gave his usual straight-shooting take on topics ranging from Computacenter’s recent annual results to sustainability, AI and the potential for further M&A.
The interview came after Norris beat his opposite numbers at the likes of M&S and Babcock to land CEO of the Year at the PLC Awards on 14 March, and ahead of his 40th and 30th anniversaries as a Computacenter employee and as its CEO, in August and December 2024, respectively.
He claimed Computacenter “outperformed every major VAR in the world” in 2023 after its annual results showed its top line smashing the £10bn barrier and a 19th consecutive annual bump in adjusted earnings per share.
“A few – five, six – big customers performed very, very well. It wasn’t all customers. It was a few over-performing customers that helped our numbers dramatically,” Norris said.
Although Computacenter has built a £3.6bn-sales North American business via its acquisitions of FusionStorm, Pivot and Business IT Source, Norris teased the possibility of further cross-Atlantic M&A.
“I don’t need to make more acquisitions in North America, but I’d like to,” he said.
AI PCs and GenAI will be “good for VARs”, Norris declared.
“This is innovation that will require more tech at the edge. More tech at the edge is good news for our business, more distributed technology is good for our business – and that’s true for all VARs, not just Computacenter,” he said.
His opinion of as-a-service, which he in 2022 branded “s**t for customers”, hasn’t changed, “other than that I feel like I have a lot more friends that agree with me”, Norris said.
Asked about being the longest-serving FTSE 250 CEO, Norris said he is “not going anywhere yet, I promise”.
“The acquisitions in the US, being Britain’s second-largest company in Germany, having 1,200 employees in Bangalore that I’m going out to see in five weeks’ time, having scale, having size, building something of significance… that’s what I get a kick out of,” he said.
Full interview starts on following page…
