Ian Vickerage
Managing director, Imago Group
Career so far I started out by reading English at Oxford University, and then went into IT. As you would. I started at Burroughs Corporation, which then became Unisys, and spent many years in IT before starting my own company 18 years ago. And that is where I still am today.
Do you care about green IT? Absolutely! Our business is mainly in video conferencing and I would say that it is the greenest kind of IT, no question.
If you could be in a rock/pop band, which one would it be and who would you be? Oh, that is easy! Led Zeppelin, and I would be Jimmy Page. I do play the guitar but not the same style as him - but it is the memories of those days. Those days were good!
What is the best corporate jolly you have ever been on/taken partners on? It was only a year ago, to Cape Town with NEC. It was just fantastic. It is a great place for all kinds of reasons, but particularly because we visited a township, in Soweto. The people in the township were so friendly, warm, lovely and charming to be with. So it was just a fantastic experience.
Has 2009 been as bad as everyone said it would be? Not for us. It has not been as good as it would have been without the recession, but a lot of people have put through video conferencing projects, because of cut-backs on travel. So we didn't do too badly.
Have any of your predictions come true this year? Yes and no. I thought things would be worse. In the first part of the year, we were really good. I thought things would get better in the autumn, and the second and third quarters would be a bit slower.
What do you see as the channel's biggest challenge in 2010? I would say it is really being able to supply full applications rather than just products. That is the key to making margin and making money.
What is the best part of your day? That is a bit of a boring one. Relaxing at home, after arriving back from an overseas trip (Vickerage was at an airport in Paris when CRN interviewed him, waiting for his flight back to the UK).