The long-time CEO of the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) that promotes the interests of IT distributors worldwide is retiring effective January 2, 2019.
After leading the GTDC for 16 years, Tim Curran is moving on to create additional time to devote to personal pursuits, including teaching at the University of South Florida.
Kavita May, currently senior vice president of planning and operations for the GTDC, will assume Curran’s responsibilities on an interim basis pending a full review of the GTDC mission that will be led by Alain Monié, chairman of the GTDC’s board of directors and CEO of Ingram Micro Inc.
In the last two decades, Curran says distribution has evolved from providing warehouse through which hardware was picked, packed and shipped to becoming providers of integrated multi-vendor solutions configured and delivered on behalf of channel partners. That shift has required distributors to become more intimately involved in the supply chains of both channel partners as well as IT vendors, adds Curran.
“When I first started it was much more of an arms-length relationship with the vendors,” says Curran.
Curran’s retirement comes at a time when generation change is sweeping the entire IT channel. Curran notes that today that are now many new solution provider companies led by younger executives that don’t understand how distributors can help them rapidly grow from, for example, $5 to $50 million in annual revenues by providing both technical and financial services. Globalization, adds Curran, is also starting to have a much bigger impact on channel partners that increasingly need to deliver IT solutions that span multiple borders.
What has not changed all that much over the years is the general lack of appreciation and understanding of the critical role distributors play in the IT ecosystem, says Curran. Collectively, distributors around the globe generate over $200 billion in annual revenue with the largest distributors consistently ranking among the list of Fortune 500 companies.
During the last two decades predictions concerning the ultimate disintermediation of the channel have come in gone. But with the rise of a new generation of solution providers integrators that are now delivering expertise around a broad range of cloud solutions, Curran says it’s clear the channel has once again proving is enduring resiliency.
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