Cloud Distribution restructures amid senior personnel changes

VAD expects up to 35 per cent revenue growth this year after hitting record £25m turnover

Cloud Distribution will undergo "team realignment" in the wake of the departure of partner development director Bruce Hockin.

Hockin (pictured) has been with the VAD for the past five years and his exit marks a second notable departure, after founder Scott Dobson left amicably in September 2018.

Adam Davison, sales and marketing director at Cloud, told CRN that additional resources will be brought in across the business to support the team realignment and growth in the wake of Hockin's departure.

"We wanted to keep the focus on the relevant products, so we created the cybersecurity team and the networking solutions team. That's really helped us get focused with partners on delivering on the value they're looking for, and really been a major part of the growth," he explained.

"It's all about being focused and making sure we're delivering the value that our partners expect of us and delivering all the partner enablement tools that we have available to help them grow end-user pipeline.

"Bruce remains a friend of the business. We've known him for many years and we wish him all the very best in the future. He's done distribution for 22 years and now he's looking at pursuing other avenues within the IT industry."

Cloud has seen its revenues grow by 80 per cent in the past two years, hitting £25m in its fiscal 2019. Davison anticipates up to 35 per cent growth for Cloud's FY20, which is expected to be underpinned by the increasing popularity of its start-up vendors as well as its bigger-name partners, such as BlackBerry and recently signed Extreme Networks.

"Some of the start-ups we've been evangelising have really started to take off, particularly a number of the ones in the security team, where we're seeing massive hockey stick growth happening," he stated.

"Cloud Distribution's heritage has been taking exciting, innovative and disruptive technologies to market. Predominantly, we've always done that with start-ups. But in the last 24 months, we've been approached by more and more large vendors - BlackBerry being the first - asking us to do what we do with start-ups, but for them as an established vendor.

"They're looking for us to help them get into new partners and new markets and generally help reinvigorate their existing channel."

The departure of two leading figures in the company in recent years and the signing of big-name partners does not indicate a shift away from its original mission, Davison emphasised.

"The strategy remains the same; we want to be seen as the leading UK distributor to bring and help vendors grow in the UK market," he said.

"We want to make sure the start-ups are successful with us and we also want to continue with the existing large brand-name vendors where we could add additional value that they just don't get from the broadliners today."