CRN Channel Awards - Finalist Q&A with Toby Evans, Head of Sales – Circular Services at Computercenter

Toby Evans talks being a finalist at this year's CRN Channel Awards

Why do you think awards like the CRN Channel Awards matter?

The Awards are a great way of bringing together stakeholders from across the channel to network and celebrate great achievements and outstanding contributions together – and it’s good to take a pause for this at a busy time of year.

What would winning this award mean to your company?

It would be fantastic to be recognised for our pioneering work in engaging customer employees to help fight the global e-waste problem, and the passion our Circular Services team has put in to build Recycle for Good from scratch, implement it, and grow it to become something our customers love and rely on as part of their sustainability strategies. Our entry showcased how we leverage our capability to do something for good rather than for profit, and an award would highlight that our efforts were worthwhile and encourage us to stretch ourselves even further.

What would you say is your company’s proudest achievement over the past year?

I’m proudest of how we’ve been helping our customers achieve ambitious goals at incredible pace – we’ve shown how we can deliver the scale and speed to support AI adoption, which is transforming the technology landscape.

I’m excited about the investments we’re making in building liquid-cooled configuration capability here in the UK. It supports the next generation of AI infrastructure while significantly improving energy efficiency, showing that performance and sustainability can coexist. It’s a tangible example of how innovation and responsibility reinforce one another.

At the same time, initiatives like Recycle for Good have made sustainability accessible and personal – the response has been fantastic. We’ve also been making great progress towards our Circular Services ambition – to recover a device for every device we sell - with October being the biggest month we’ve ever had for device recovery!

This year I really feel like we’re making a difference across the board.

What have been the biggest challenges of 2025 so far and how have you overcome them? How have your people helped with that?

Balancing the rapid technology evolution with responsible consumption. We’re having to think carefully about lifecycle management – not just deploying tech faster, but recovering, reusing, and recycling it better. Our people have been the driving force behind that, from our engineers designing smart, AI-driven solutions to our front-line teams helping customers make informed choices, and of course, the teams that are driving our initiative to recover a device for each one we sell. It’s a real team effort.

How do you think the industry has changed over the past year and what changes do you think it still needs to make?

The industry is maturing fast in its approach to AI and automation, with the conversation shifting from hype to governance – from what’s possible to what’s responsible. We still need to see more collaboration across the ecosystem to ensure data is secure, skills are inclusive, and technology outcomes are fair for everyone and for the planet.

We’ve also seen sustainability shift from being a side topic to a fairly consistent board-level agenda item. Customers are asking deeper questions about supply chain emissions, circularity, and digital waste. The next shift needs to be from measurement to action, and using data not just to report progress, but to drive smarter design, procurement, and reuse across the lifecycle.

It’s great that the two topics are advancing together – it should lead to better outcomes in terms of sustainability, resilience, and performance.

What do you see as the main opportunities for the industry in the coming year? How do you plan to capitalise on those opportunities?

A lot of opportunity lies in scaling intelligence responsibly. As organisations embrace AI, they’ll need trusted partners who can help them do it securely, sustainably, and at pace. Computacenter is really well-positioned to help them do that across the whole technology stack.

There’s also an opportunity to make sustainability easier for customers. Whether it’s through things like Recycle for Good or our wider Circular Services, improved transparency to support decision-making, or embedding sustainability thinking into customer solutions – we can help organisations make responsible choices that are easy, measurable, and beneficial for both their people and the planet.

We want to help make progress sustainable – technologically, environmentally, and socially. We’re focusing on solutions that do more with less. That’s how we’ll help our customers achieve their goals and make technology not just an enabler, but a genuine force for good.