John Lindley
Business development director, Portal Partnership
Career so far I've spent the last 25 years in IT, after starting life as a zoologist. I started ALTIS (an IBM s/w reseller and services company) in 1992, and in 2006 I merged ALTIS with other IBM partner businesses to form Portal Partnership. Right now I'm really focused on social computing in the workplace.
Do you care about green IT? I care about green everything. Green is good when talking to customers - most organisations seem to have budget, or at least interest in support of a green agenda. At Portal Partnership, our office is carbon neutral and we cut down on travel to customers by encouraging remote working.
If you could be in a rock/pop band, which one would it be and who would you be? Ronnie van Zandt from Lynyrd Skynyrd. He was proper rock'n'roll. Or I'd have to be Lemmy from Motorhead. Play loud, live fast, don't sleep!
What is the best corporate jolly you have ever been on/taken partners on? I was taken to the 2006 Music Hall of Fame awards by our s/w distributor and had an absolute blast. The highlight of the evening was talking to the legendary Nona Hendryx, who mistook me for her former head of security and hugged me enthusiastically!
Has 2009 been as bad as everyone said it would be? Not in our bit of the industry. Software margins have been tight but services business has held up really well. We've actually increased headcount and improved profitability over the year.
Have any of your predictions come true this year? England won the Ashes, and social computing has started to become accepted in the workplace.
What do you see as the channel's biggest challenge in 2010? For service centric resellers like us, the "cloud" represents both opportunity and challenge. Finding new services that we can provide to customers, once we've moved them into a fully provisioned environment, is going to be interesting.
What is the best part of your day? Early morning. A big mug of freshly ground, industrial strength black coffee before leaving for work. 8.30am on a Sunday is also pretty good - I'm on the first tee at the golf club just about to start my round, so I haven't dampened my spirits by hitting a bad shot yet!