Outgoing Insight boss Fenton eyes apps and cloud for next role

EMEA leader to stay on to identify successor and expresses pride and gratitude after 11 years at VAR

After announcing he will be leaving the firm in the coming months, Insight EMEA managing director Stuart Fenton has claimed he will be "attracted to mobile apps and the cloud" when he looks for a new challenge.

Fenton (pictured) could stay on for a year or more, having committed to help identify his successor and serve "whatever handover period works for the new person".

"There is no way I would leave Insight in anything other than rude health," he told CRN. "More important than anything else for me is that Insight has the right leadership and that it has all the people in place to drive the business forward."

For his next role, the departing EMEA chief hinted that he may look to work in an emerging area of the industry.

"I am enormously interested in mobile apps and the cloud and adapting to the convergence of those things," he explained. "Those are the areas that are really interesting to me, particularly as they are commoditising and companies [in that sector] are moving from being übercool small businesses to being bigger, higher-velocity businesses and therefore the innovation stakes have to increase."

Fenton is leaving the VAR after more than a decade, having overseen the expansion of its EMEA operations from sales of $382m (£247m) in 2002 to more than $1.4bn last year. He stressed that he still "loves the company" and is proud to leave it in solid shape for future development.

"I announced the news to my team and the wider organisation yesterday and the response has been overwhelming and not a little emotional – and I am not known for being emotional," he added. "The piece that always makes you proud is when you have seen someone join as a salesperson or an engineer and you help them and watch them grow into a critical individual contributor or take a leadership role.

"What would I have done differently? Loads of things. You make lots of decisions and I do not in any way, shape or form claim to have got them all right, but I believe there have been more right than wrong, and that I can hold my head up and say I always acted with integrity and made sure that this company has acted with integrity. I have always taken the approach of recruiting and developing people; we have never been big fans of recruiting people by headhunting."

Fenton explained that Insight has always had effective internal succession programmes, but stressed that it would only be appropriate to also consider outside candidates for the role.

"There are some supremely talented people in the market," he added. "But they would have to be the right fit strategically and they would have to want to do it. This is a job that requires high energy for about 80 hours a week; if they can prove they can do that, we would be enormously happy and proud to bring someone like that into the business."

Whenever he departs Insight, Fenton expects to be working again "within a day or two".

"I have never been particularly good at time off," he admitted.