Mark Lambert

Career so far: I’ve been working in the IT industry since leaving school at 16 and entered a YTS course on Macintosh support. The first computer I worked on was a Mac Plus. I worked for various IT companies over the years, and then founded and developed VAR Bear IT.

If you could be anyone else for a week, who would you be and what would you do? I would love to be Steve Jobs – all that new technology to think of and play with.

What would you have as your last meal? It would have to be my favourite Chinese meal with all the trimmings.

What is the best corporate jolly you have ever been on/taken partners on? I went to an OKI event in London – hotel, transport, all meals and evening entertainment all paid for.

Do you see the cloud as a threat or an opportunity? The cloud can work both ways, depending on how you are embracing technology. If you are a large organisation, you are at risk if you don’t have backup connectivity to the cloud. At the opposite end of the spectrum, what happens if the cloud solution fails? If you are a small micro business, then it can work as a plus as your requirement isn’t so heavy as a large organisation, so you can implement your own managed backups in case there is some sort of cloud issue, or in case you can’t connect.

What do you see as the channel’s biggest challenge in 2011? Margins are still tight and businesses are only just starting to spend again, so this makes our job even harder. Cloud computing will be giving us headaches as we enter the unknown. What is the best part of your day? Getting home to see my family – smiles all-round.