David McLeman
Managing director, Ancoris
Career so far I have spent 15 years in the industry, starting as a software engineer at Logica, then helping grow Sequent (now IBM) from start-up to 600 people in Europe, finally at SAN & UNIX vendor Data General as UK & Ireland managing director before our acquisition by EMC. My involvement with internet service delivery started in 1999 as part of the team that launched Netstore’s (now 2E2) hosted Exchange services (the first in the UK). In 2003 I founded Ancoris, now one of Google’s leading Enterprise partners in the UK.
If you could be anyone else for a week, who would you be? Andy Carroll. I’d love to score for West Ham at Upton Park. Being 23 again and over 6ft would be pretty good, too.
What will next year’s most overhyped industry buzzword be? A close tie between big data and cloud. Unfortunately in both cases, news of innovative new technology solutions to current problems are being hijacked by legacy vendors rebranding their old offerings and muddying the waters for customers.
Has 2012 been a good, bad or ugly year? 2012 has continued to be challenging for most. However, the combination of three main trends have been great for Ancoris and our service offerings with Google Apps for business: companies looking to save costs; businesses adopting collaboration tools in order to innovate; and the dawn of the post-PC era as users want flexible working on any device.
What would you have as your last meal? I’d prefer not to know I was having it!
What keeps you awake at night? Not much; most problems can be dealt with once you’ve slept on it.
What piece of technology could you not be without? Cloud collaboration with Google Docs and Drive. The idea of emailing attachments seems completely archaic once you’ve got used to the idea of sharing docs and then always having the current version always accessible from phone, tablet and PC.
Have any of your predictions come true this year? The initial emergence of social networking in the enterprise. The acquisition of Yammer by Microsoft and the launch of Google+ for business show that there is demand for a more collaborative platform for employee and customer communication and feedback. As the Facebook generation becomes the next business leaders, enterprise social networking will become commonplace.
What is the best partner/customer trip you have ever been on? I went to the 1995 Rugby World Cup with our South African partner. The atmosphere as the country re-emerged following the end of apartheid was wonderful. It put business into context for all of us.
What do you see as the channel’s biggest challenge in 2013? Many companies will need to transform to stay relevant as the industry enters the post-PC and cloud era. The strength of channel partner relationships with their customers will ensure most continue to thrive.