Commercial director, System Professional
What was the worst job you have ever had?
I had a Saturday job working at a printers. I had to print the company names into thousands of charity Christmas cards. It was very repetitive, I regularly burnt myself with hot lead and I got constant grief from the other staff as the "Tea Boy".
Which actor would you pick to play you in a movie of your life?
If you spoke to my friends and work colleagues, they'd all say it would have to be Dom Jolly as you'd not be able to tell the difference. In my head it's definitely Clooney.
What do you do as your party trick? I've been known to make whole rooms full of people forget what they were doing the night before.
What is your favourite chocolate bar?
Cadbury's Fruit and Nut.
What has been the highlight of your career to date?
Difficult to say really. It's probably seeing the team of people that we've assembled really flourishing and taking Sys Pro to the next level.
Has 2014 been a good, bad or ugly year?
Pretty good. Revenues are up - our cloud/hosting revenues exceeded £500k and our support business now exceeds £1.3m so we're truly a managed services provider.
How would you explain the IT channel to a stranger without boring them to death?
I'm not sure I'd try. Something like today's users want business IT to be as easy and reliable to use as it is to pick up their tablet at home. The IT channel helps IT departments to identify, deploy and support solutions that give users that kind of experience.
Aside from the channel, my dream career would be... football coaching at a top European side, somewhere hot.
What major issues will the channel face in 2015?
Continued pressure on product margins will see more and more traditional resellers move into the managed services space. This will create additional price pressure, more "cloud-washing" and a real challenge for businesses to transition from one model to the other.
