Alex Tatham on why he is leaving Westcoast

"I think that I’ve done all I could at Westcoast", MD tells CRN as he talks through decision to join NSC Global

Westcoast supremo Alex Tatham has opened up on his decision to leave the distribution giant, telling CRN that it was "the right time" to move on.

Currently on gardening leave, Tatham will formally vacate the MD's seat on 31 August after helping the Theale-based firm swell revenue from £600m to £3.7bn during his 14-year time there.

He will begin his new role of global head of clients and marketing at London-based NSC Global on 26 September after enjoying a short break.

Network infrastructure services outfit NSC Global turned over £146.1m in its year to 31 October 2021, with its UK arm generating £49.4m of the total.

Streatham-based Tatham stressed that moving to a smaller, less mature business based nearer to home was a "personal decision".

"It was the right time for me personally," he explained.

"I wanted to work in London - commuting out of London every day to Reading was one of the aspects of this. And my wife has multiple sclerosis, so I wanted to make sure I was closer to her.

"Secondly, I think I've done all I could at Westcoast. I'm 57 years old, so it felt like a good opportunity to do one last thing - when you're 60 it's probably too late.

"And another reason was that [NSC founder] Yaseen [Khan] asked me: I wasn't looking - he asked.

"[Westcoast owner] Joe [Hemani] wants to keep me on as a non-exec at Westcoast, so everything added up nicely. There was no compelling reason to leave; it just felt like the right time."

NSC feels like a very exciting business. I join it at a similar time that I joined Joe

Tatham billed NSC as a "services business" that has strong ties with the likes of Cisco, Aruba, Juniper and Dell, with a particular strength in the networking arena.

"A lot of their income comes from selling people, break-fix, networking services and managed services across the world to very large system integrators and large corporates. What they do is very different from Westcoast, I can assure you, but they do buy some products from Westcoast. And I think the product business is one of the things that they could really drive forward, and that's something that Yaseen has particularly asked me to do," he explained.

Tatham said he is joining NCS at a similar point in its development to where Westcoast was in 2007.

"The opportunity I'm going to feels very exciting. NSC feels like a very exciting business. I join it at a similar time that I joined Joe, who effectively gave me more and more things to do. And I can feel Yaseen doing exactly the same thing with his business NSC, so you can feel it was the right time for Yaseen too to move things through," he concluded.