Stuart Fenton

Career so far I founded software reseller WindowLine in 1989, have been vice president Europe/managing director Canada at Microwarehouse, and I was headhunted in 2002 to turn around Insight UK.

If you could be anyone else for a week, who would you be and what would you do? Steve Jobs in the early 80s - dealing with all that creativity would be a joy.

Cloud - friend or foe? Huge friend - it is an inevitability and should be embraced.

Has 2011 been as bad as everyone said it would be? If I look over last five years there have certainly been more difficult years. 2011 for Insight has been transformational - where we have launched new businesses capabilities and won new clients and embraced the cloud. Overall it's been all right.

What would you have as your last meal? Anything as long as I was with my wife.

Who would you like to be stuck in a lift with? My wife.

Have any of your predictions come true this year? About 50 per cent of my predictions have come true. Notably, the bring-your-own-device phenomenan as it relates to tablet and mobile phones. But it has perhaps been even more pervasive than I imagined.

What do you see as the channel's biggest challenge in 2012? Different parts of the channel have different challenges so there is never one. Critically vendor programmes certifications, deal registration and rebate programmes often create a lot more problems than they solve and therefore add cost which often remove innovation from the channel.

What is the best part of your day? Meeting clients and understanding the challenges and seeing that my team can handle them and make our clients operations quicker, better and faster.