Mark Evans
Marketing & communications director, Imerja
Career so far I worked with the NHS for two years after leaving university before travelling to Hong Kong where I managed an Italian restaurant for nine months. I left this nocturnal existence to join environmental engineering consultancy Montgomery Watson as bid manager working on projects across SE Asia. After three years living in Hong Kong I spent another two years travelling home ‘the long way', joining SAS Institute for six months on my return. I rejoined Montgomery Watson for a further three years working in Europe and the Middle East, then after a brief spell with Cable & Wireless I joined Satelcom in 2001. I started working with Imerja as one of the founder members in 2004 - my longest job to date!
Do you care about green IT? Yes. As a company, aside from a recycling policy within the office environment, we offset all our carbon emissions from business travel. We have also developed carbon neutral complex hosting services which help our customers achieve their own green agendas in parallel to reducing costs and increasing efficiencies.
If you could be in a rock/pop band, which one would it be and who would you be? REM, Michael Stipe. I grew up listening to their music and we have the same hairstyle.
What is the best corporate jolly you have ever been on/taken partners on? I was fortunate to be invited on a week trip to Thailand as a guest of the BT indirect channel - I had previously travelled through the country several times in the 1990s when I was living in Hong Kong, but this was a very different experience to that of a backpacker.
Has 2009 been as bad as everyone said it would be? It has certainly been challenging in some respects, but from a business perspective we have enjoyed our best year growing more than 60 per cent on last year. I think technology has proven itself to be an effective enabler, helping organisations realise efficiencies and cost savings across their business; and the growth in IT services and out-tasking in particular has set a trend that I believe will continue once the recession is over.
Have any of your predictions come true this year? No. Builders were due to finish work on our house back in March - seven months on and they are still making visits to finish things off!
What do you see as the channel's biggest challenge in 2010? I think demand for all forms of business mobile communications will increase, and at the moment I am not sure that the channel is fully coordinated to offer resellers an integrated blend of hand-held technology, applications and support to seamlessly deliver secure, business-class solutions for enterprise customers. Also, the anticipated reduction in public spending as we continue to come out of recession will potentially put more pressure on margins for everyone in the channel.
What is the best part of your day? Getting home from work in time for dinner and spending the evening with my young family.