Managing director, Verisolve
Career so far My first job was as a children's party organiser at the local leisure centre. I eventually found my way into IT services but the principles of management learnt with the kids are still as relevant in boardrooms today! I've set up and sold a couple of services businesses of late and this, I've discovered, I love to do.
If you could be anyone else for a week, who would you be? Charlie Sheen, just to explore the possibilities of human endurance and consumption!
What will next year's most overhyped industry buzzword be? Cloud computing. Nothing yet will supersede this; a good second will be open source.
Has 2012 been a good, bad or ugly year? We provide specialised, channel-friendly services in Red Hat Linux, JBoss, VDi and Oracle; you'd be hard pushed to think anything was wrong. So yes, good. I'm a huge fan of partner-based services. But me, I'm still ugly.
What would you have as your last meal? Vodka jelly would qualify as food, I believe.
What keeps you awake at night? Food production output not keeping up with population growth; still, the other answer wouldn't be printable.
What piece of technology could you not be without? My pesky iPhone.
Have any of your predictions come true this year? Yes, the remake of Total Recall without Arnold would be crap - it was. Ed Miliband would disappoint - he does. The Olympics would be outstanding - they were. Other than that no; the future will unfold as it should.
What is the best partner/customer trip you have ever been on? Arizona, few years back, was a great trip with good company.
What do you see as the channel's biggest challenge in 2013? The same as it's always been - understanding what customers want and enabling the delivery of the reality over the hype. The channel needs to do what it has always done well - focus on the clients, evolve their competencies, remain innovative and not be intimidated by vendor power.
