Career so far I am a trained engineer. Following that, I moved into a variety of sales and sales management roles in banking with GE, Lloyds and Barclays for 15 years, then joining EMC in 2000. Since then I have enjoyed a number of UK and EMEA-based sales management positions, culminating in the appointment to my current job in January 2010.
If you could be anyone else for a week, who would you be and what would you do? I would be Gary Barlow and would on the first night play a concert with Take That at Wembley in front of 85,000 people; be a guest on the Jonathan Ross show with Richard Branson, Michael Parkinson and Julia Roberts on the second night; sit next to Kelly Rowland as a judge on X-Factor on night three; go to a big music award ceremony in the US on night four; and probably spend the other three nights working out how I could spend the multi-millions I have just earned from my last tour.
Cloud - friend or foe? Cloud is a big friend for both EMC and its partners. EMC has a fantastic technology proposition in this space and, with the complementary services that our partners can offer, we can help accelerate our customers' journey to this new world.
Has 2011 been as bad as everyone said it would be? It has been a good year for EMC. We have continued to grow ahead of the market through a combination of talented people; a focus on doing a small number of things well; and a huge amount of hard work.
What would you have as your last meal? It depends what time of day I was eating it. If it was morning, it would have to be a full English breakfast; if it was lunchtime or evening, it would have to be roast pork with crackling and all the trimmings.
Who would you like to be stuck in a lift with? Richard Branson. I would pick his brains for his three Top Tips on becoming a billionaire when you leave school with no qualifications.
Have any of your predictions come true this year? My business ones have come true, but sadly my predictions that Chelsea would win the Premier League and that England would win the Rugby World Cup did not.
What do you see as the channel's biggest challenge in 2012? The biggest challenge for the channel - outside the availability of credit, which continues to be a big issue - is how organisations transition their own business model from a product resell to the delivery of applications, infrastructure and software-as-a-service offerings to their customers.
What is the best part of your day? When I get home at the end of the day to be greeted by my wife, three daughters, two daft Labradors, one cat and two horses (the latter obviously don't live in the house).
