Arrow snatches $350m from competitors as it survives Dell's distribution cull

Distributor will carry Dell's enterprise products in all markets it previously distributed EMC

Arrow has grabbed over $350m (£280m) in business from its distribution competitors, according to CEO Michael Long.

On an earnings call following the release of Arrow's full-year results, a transcript of which can be found here, Long said the distributor will start to see the benefit of the new business over the coming year and will also look to onboard more partners.

Arrow's revenue increased 2.3 per cent for the full year ending 31 December 2016, to £23.8bn.

"In my years at Arrow, I've never seen greater opportunities for our business than coming into 2017," he said. "[That's] not exaggeration, but a fact.

"We have now closed on over $350m in annual business that will be switching to Arrow from other distributors in the coming quarters. We're bringing new VARs and MSPs in-house and doing more business with our existing customers. Here, again, the uptake will ramp up in the middle to second half of the year.

"Our cloud business had an outstanding year in 2016 with no slowdown in momentum [and] our annualised cloud billings run rate exceeded $400m in the fourth quarter, and is also a profitable contributor to the business."

Long also revealed that Arrow has been distributing Dell's enterprise offerings since the start of this month.

Following its acquisition of EMC in 2016, Dell announced it would be culling distribution partners at the start of this year.

"We expect 2017 to be a better year for hardware," he added. "New technologies such as solid-state storage and hyper-converged infrastructure are growing 50 per cent year over year.

"I already mentioned the $350m of new customer wins [and] in addition, we learned very recently that effective this month we're being authorised for Dell's enterprise offerings in all the same markets for which we carried EMC.

"We have the opportunity to make 2017 the most exciting year in our 82-year history [and] as we move forward in the year I look forward to sharing with you more milestones towards our evolutions."

Sean Kerins, president of Arrow's enterprise computing solutions division, said that it is too early to measure the impact the Dell offerings will have on Arrow business, but that the outlook is promising.

"At this point, it's a little bit unknown," he said. "It's still new but given the footprint we have with the EMC, we certainly think that we have a good shot at some growth with that line."