Graham Long
Vice president corporate sales & IT solutions, UK & Ireland, Samsung Electronics UK
Career so far I have been at Samsung Electronics for more than four years and oversee Samsung’s corporate sales & IT solutions in the UK & Ireland. Prior to joining Samsung, I worked at HP at a director level in both marketing and sales capacities.
If you could be anyone else for a week, who would you be? Richard Branson, who has created an amazingly diverse business empire with some incredible holiday destinations in the portfolio of properties he owns.
What will next year’s most overhyped industry buzzword be? Big data.
Has 2012 been a good, bad or ugly year? 2012 has been a great year for Samsung. We have made significant strides and are now a top three vendor across all our key strategic areas of development from a B2B\enterprise perspective and consumer retail point of view.
What would you have as your last meal? KFC.
What keeps you awake at night? How to continually evolve and progress the strategic objectives of our business.
What piece of technology could you not be without? My Samsung Series-9 notebook – the sexiest device out there.
Have any of your predictions come true this year? I can't take the credit for all of our predictions but we have certainly seen significant customer interest and revenue growth in premium computing and mobile technology - from laptop to tablet to mobile. Businesses are waking up to the idea of bringing the latest technology to their employees and we are reaping the rewards.
Digital Signage is also proving a massive growth area for our business and we believe this will continue to be a real strategic opportunity for the VAR and IT partner community in 2013.
What is the best partner/customer trip you have ever been on? Being a top-tier sponsor of the London 2012 Olympic Games brought some fantastic events, from both a business partner and community development perspective.
What do you see as the channel’s biggest challenge in 2013? The biggest challenge is crossing the divide between traditional computing and mobility solutions. Convergence is finally here.