Inside CRN's May issue

Digital transformation - the concept that all organisations are becoming technology organisations at their core - is a term that's never far from the lips of vendors and analysts these days.

So it's perhaps no shock that ‘DX' - as it's often shortened to - was a dominant theme in this issue's Big Interview with Insight UK boss Emma de Sousa on p16.

One of the top 10 UK resellers for decades, Insight's progress has been eclipsed in recent years by the lightning growth of Softcat and CDW.

De Sousa attributed the uptick in Insight's fortunes - global Q1 sales powered up 19 per cent - to its success in reshaping itself for the DX era, when, she argues, product fulfilment is less important than the ability to provide a full solution.

It now has three times as many sales staff working in the field than it had three years ago, and has also set up a partner-to-partner arm housing specialist resellers that can bolster Insight's in-house skills, she explained.

De Sousa also happens to be one of the few female bosses among the UK's top 100 resellers.

On this note, the lack of board-level female executives in our industry has been thrown into sharp focus by the gender pay gap reports all UK organisations with 250 or more staff were forced to publish at the start of April.

The average median pay gap among the UK's top 35 resellers stands at 23 per cent, according to CRN research. Those firms we looked at were quick to stress that they paid male and female staff equally for similar roles and instead laid the blame on the lack of female staff in higher-paid posts, including boardroom positions.

Getting more female staff into the industry, particularly in technical roles, and ensuring they are able to rise through the organisation, is now a priority for all, and you can read about the various ways firms in our sector are approaching this on p10.

Elsewhere in this issue, we have write-ups from two big vendor conferences in the form of Cisco Partner Connection Week and Dell Technologies World, on p22 and 28.

Also, don't miss our feature exploring whether resellers building a cloud strategy should be considering Google as a third partnering option alongside larger rivals AWS and Azure.

As ever, please get in touch via ChannelWeb or Twitter @CRN_UK.

■ Doug Woodburn is editor of CRN.

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