Mike Trup

Career so far I have been a research student on Anarchist Philosophy, director of an export finance company shipping goods to Nigeria, management consultant with a big four consultancy, spent 10 years in the City as a stockbroker, becoming international sales and marketing director of the international division of a Fortune 100 stockbroker, I've been a full-time MBA student and 14 years ago, founder of Interactive Ideas.

Do you care about green IT? Green IT is an important trend which opens up new opportunities. However, on a more personal basis, I am interested in digital inclusion for developing countries.

If you could be in a rock/pop band, which one would it be and who would you be? I would say Queen but that would lead to too many comments, so I'd better stick to Madness. I don't know anyone's name apart from Suggs but I have an awful voice so anything apart from singing.

What is the best corporate jolly you have ever been on/taken partners on? We just did a classic car driving day at Goodwood for our partners; that was tremendous. The helicopter ride was my first, and as someone who seems to spend half his life on the M25, I have now officially targeted the team on buying me a helicopter!

Has 2009 been as bad as everyone said it would be? We had a record 2009 with a 48 per cent increase on the previous year. We are still tracking up about 25 per cent so far this year and anticipate our growth accelerating again. As we are not in the hardware market and most of our solutions represent a cost saving alternative, we see great opportunity in this environment.

Have any of your predictions come true this year? None of my lottery numbers have come up. Otherwise, channel consolidation and a growth in Linux and open source solutions have both come about and will be trends that will run a fair way yet.

What do you see as the channel's biggest challenge in 2010? Managing government budget cuts and corporate customer liquidity will be key. Customer IT Departments are under pressure to get "more from less". The risk has moved from doing something different to doing nothing as a result. Those resellers who have relied on hardware sales and software sales of the market dominating vendors will have to learn about new technologies that can save their clients' money and to develop a skills base for the provision of services around open source software to improve their margins.

What is the best part of your day? Arriving at the office. We have a great cappuccino machine!