Compaq UK & Ireland founder McNally passes away

Pioneer who turned subsidiary into $1bn giant by 1997 sadly dies after fight with cancer

The industry is mourning the death of Compaq UK and Ireland founder Joe McNally, who has passed away at the age of 69 after a battle with cancer.

McNally launched Compaq UK in 1984 with a reported $40,000 (£25,000) and no dedicated staff.

He turned the company into a $1bn enterprise by 1997, the first of Compaq’s subsidiaries to hit the figure, and is credited as being one of the founding fathers of the UK channel as it is known now.

McNally retired in July 2001 and HP acquired Compaq in the same year, marking the biggest vendor merger in the IT industry's history at the time.

McNally had a colourful pre-Compaq career – road sweeping while retaking an A-level, working at meat and bacon processing firm FMC Harris and working his way up to chief executive before the firm went through a hostile takeover, and being sacked by his father from his steel stockholding company.

Ian French, chief executive of Siceo, who worked with McNally during his time at the helm of distributor Bell Micro, said via Twitter that McNally would be missed.

“Joe McNally supported the developing UK IT channels – a fine, no-nonsense leader who influenced many, including me. I will miss him,” he said.

In a poignant tribute sent to CRN, Howard Rosen, the original financial director at Compaq UK and Ireland, said: "I worked with Joe McNally for 15 years. He really was a unique character. Working frequently from gut instinct, and with a laser focus on 'The Number' (ie: current month revenue), he built an eclectic team around him, frequently young, and delegated an unusual level of responsibility.

"Our growth hid several mistakes - the philosophy was very much 'be decisive, act quickly and we'll fix mistakes later'; so we ran rings around many slower competitors. But it was dangerous to make the same mistake twice! And the growth was amazing - for several years, we would have a celebration in May when we matched the result for the previous calendar year. In the mid-1980's IBM's PC division was 400 times our size; by the mid-1990's we'd overtaken them. Frequently gruff (partly for show), routinely scheduling meetings at 7:30am, notably firing and reinstating a manager twice in one meeting, he earned both respect and loyalty - which was reciprocated.

"Even within Compaq globally, the results from Compaq UK & Ireland were exceptional. Once we had beaten IBM and the rest of the industry, the competitor we had to beat was Compaq France - which we did. A strong advocate of the reseller channel - which gave Compaq our scalability and did well from Compaq in return - he built a great many relationships which turned into friendships lasting into his retirement."

News of his passing was first broken by CRN's competitor ChannelRegister.