Last week on back-to-back days the top two distributors in the market place announced significant leadership moves that will have great impact in Canada.
Tech Data named former Ingram Canada boss Murray Wright its new president of the Americas replacing Ken Lamneck, who left to become president of Insight.
I have dealt with Wright for many years now and he is a first class individual who is smart enough to match company goals to those of distributor’s top reseller customers.
He was also the president of Lenovo Canada before joining Tech Data. So he knows and understands vendors and how they work. While at Ingram he played a prominant role in the creation of the SMB Alliance, which was a vendor focused group. The SMB Alliance has worked wonders for Ingram and the 22 vendors who particate in the group. This is the kind of high level thinking Wright can bring to this job, which includes the Canadian region.
Taking over the SMB Alliance responsibility at Ingram Canada will be former Microsoft Canada and CA executive Derick Wong.
Wong was named new marketing chief at Ingram Micro Canada replacing Deborah Brown.
The marketing job in distribution is unsung one for sure, but I think it’s a vital postion because you need to create demand generation in the IT market place. Without marketing help smaller vendors will get lost in the woods and resellers too will be unable to solve complex technical problems for customers. Let’s face facts here not all technology problems can be solved by Microsoft, HP, IBM and Cisco.
It will be Wong’s job to unearth these new vendors and get them in front of solution providers.
I have interviewed Wong a few times in the past while he was at Microsoft Canada and CA. I can tell you he is a very personable fellow and I can see him fitting in well with Ingram’s top tier reseller customers such as the VTN group.
I have heard that Wong will be working in conjunction with Ingram’s U.S. marketing team. This will be Wong’s biggest challenge going forward in my opinion. He will have to come up with innovative plans that first must work for Canada and somehow fit into the the North American view.
CDN wishes both Wright and Wong the very best in their new positions.
