Peter Lorant

Head of enterprise partners (EMEA), Google

Career so far More than 80 quarters in IT sales and marketing for leading hardware, software, services and channel organisations such as IBM, Computacenter, ECsoft, Business Objects and Google.

If you could be anyone else for a week, who would you be? I dream of being Sara Yirrell, so I can see what the lifestyle of the rich and famous is really like.

What will next year's most overhyped industry buzzword be? "Big data" is fast becoming the buzzword of devious marketers around the world. If you search for "big data" in Google Trends, you can see the massive jump in hype this year. Interestingly, the top three regions for big data queries are India, South Korea and Singapore.

Has 2012 been a good, bad or ugly year? Google's Enterprise division continues to defy gravity and we are seeing strong growth across all our product lines. Innovation and value never go out of fashion - even in a recession.

What would you have as your last meal? A 10-course meal consisting solely of Tequila.

What keeps you awake at night? A 10-course meal consisting solely of Tequila.

What piece of technology could you not be without? The "delete" key in Gmail.

Have any of your predictions come true this year? I make it a point to never make predictions - especially about the future. However, I am proud that my hindsight is 20/20.

What is the best partner/customer trip you have ever been on? An epic dinner at a Parisian five-star Michelin restaurant with seven colleagues where the wine bill alone could have bought a small house.

What do you see as the channel's biggest challenge in 2013? I don't see any change in 2013 - the strong will continue to become stronger and the weak will go out of business. There is no middle ground any more - the ‘undead' zombies are becoming fewer and fewer.