Tech Data UK boss on Brexit, key growth areas and sustainability

David Watts opened up to CRN on a range of issues at the distributor's annual Tech Data Live partner event

Tech Data has strengthened its team and changed its processes in preparation for a hard Brexit, according to UK MD David Watts.

CRN spoke with Watts at its recent annual partner event Tech Data Live, which was hosted at Ascot racecourse this year.

The UK boss opened up on a range of topics from how it is prepared in the event of a no-deal Brexit, to the technologies it considers key growth areas to what partners should expect from the distributor.

He also discussed sustainability - which was the theme of this year's Live event - and how the distie is aiding partners in implementing sustainable practices in their own businesses, as well as how partners have responded to its encouragement to move towards a cloud-based sales model by merging its enterprise software and cloud units. Watts' answers can be seen in the video above.

We are one month out from what we are told is the definite Leave date for Brexit, deal or no deal. How is Tech Data prepared for such a scenario?

We've been preparing for Brexit since it was first announced. We very quickly moved to work on the assumption that it will be a hard Brexit from a planning perspective. You have to plan towards something - we still don't know what that something is - but [planning] towards a worst-case scenario of a worst-case scenario, [means we have had to] make some changes to our systems and our processes for a hard Brexit.

We've had to change our processes, beef up the team and change our ERP system slightly to prepare for it.

I think the question then is ‘what will happen to the economy?', and then another one - which we've already experienced since Brexit - is what happens to exchange rates because we sell in pounds and euros and we buy in pounds, euros and dollars from our manufacturers; we report our results from sterling into dollars. So what happens to that exchange rate during that period is really important to us.

What is the biggest demand in solutions sets that you are seeing from reseller partners?

The key one really is cloud. Where people really need some support is ‘What should be my strategy around cloud? Is it full cloud? Is it hybrid?' ‘When I'm talking to my customers about cloud, what choices do I need to support them to make it and how do I bill it? How do I measure consumption? What help can we give them with those things?' So we can take them on an absolute transformation journey.

Take Microsoft Azure, for example. A partner might use us for technical and sales support to walk them through their first sale. Then we will help them understand the consumption model, help them with their monthly billing of that customer, and then work on expanding their portfolio. We've got a really muscular level of support that we give around the cloud.

What are the technologies that Tech Data sees as key growth areas for the company in the UK?

The Advanced Solutions business - which came out of the Avnet acquisition - is a really key area of growth; cloud, IoT, analytics, security and offerings around hyperconverged infrastructure [all have] really aggressive growth.

Across the whole business - not just Advanced Solutions now - we have different models of taking products to market. For example, as-a-service models on hardware are really strong for us - we invested really early in that. That's at the point of going very fast volume, and consumption models are growing really rapidly.

We also have a tool in StreamOne that supports our customers. Those are two balanced areas of growth which are growing fast for us as well; one is around solutions portfolios, the other is new ways of transacting business.

What are the big trends at this year's event and what do you want partners to take away from it?

There are no resellers at this event who really will be able to sell all 10 of the solutions that we've got today. But there are one or two, which are very adjacent to what they do now, where we can support them to transform their business into the areas where they have less expertise.

I think the core to this event, which is really reflecting the strategy that we've got globally, is that the pace of technology change and the multitude of offerings that our customers need to provide to their end-users means that they should expect a lot of support from the vendors, but also from the distributors.