Ben Gower

clock • 2 min read

Chief executive, Perspicuity

What is your greatest career move to date?

We pushed to be first to build a cloud business around Microsoft, and when we screwed it up, we pushed again until it worked.

What is top of your bucket list? No idea. Really I am lucky enough to travel and see some amazing things, eat amazing food and work with amazing people. If I could continue to do that it would be more than enough.

What has changed most since you started working in the channel?

It's still the cloud - predictable from me but really it is/was the biggest shift in customer buying behaviour and business models I can recall.

How do you think Brexit is going to affect the channel?

It will change it, but not economically. The social aspects will cast a slow and long shadow.

What is your least favourite task during the working day?

Eeek, nothing. My days are brilliant, I love my job and I have such a talented team.

If you were an animal, what would you be?

No, I'm not answering - there are too many clichés.

If you won the big one on EuroMillions, what would you do?

Invest in Perspicuity, give it the liquidity to take the model into the US and Australia. Build organisations that help humans get the best from themselves. I've learned so much about what people can achieve through our apprenticeships, so given the time and the money I could achieve a whole lot more that would benefit people, society and business. It would need a bit of thinking about.

What is your worst habit?

Red wine.

How has 2016 been for you?

It has been very inspiring. We've done some amazing things with our Ingram partnership which will be in market soon and the business overall is growing 25 per cent year-on-year, which is good, but we'll see more next year - and we did it being good to people, or maybe because we are good to people.

If you didn't work in the IT channel, what would be your dream career? 

A tree house builder. It's surely the best job in the world: outside, no rules, be a kid and be paid for it. Fantastic. What major issues will the channel face in 2017? Sterling is a bit of an issue, but it already makes us better value in the US for services. I think the biggest issues will be choosing which horses us service providers choose to back; the complexity of the vendor products and competition is unparalleled.

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