EMC’s Scot still revels in IT

With more than 20 years experience in the IT industry, David Henderson, general manager of commercial and channel sales, EMC, says his enthusiasm for the industry only grows stronger.

During his time in IT, Henderson has worked for a variety of vendors and has even sat on the other side of the fence in the distribution channel.

He’s been around long enough to recall the day resellers could make 42 points on notebooks. “Now these guys are lucky to make five, he says.

“Hardware is moving to commoditisation so there is a real need to drive margins through other vehicles,” he says.

“Success in the channel is being able to track successful technology trends.

The market is seeing constant consolidation of vendors therefore partners need to ensure strategic alignment with vendors. There also needs to be shared business risk and vendor empathy for the reseller.”

Henderson says distributors are cutting resellers because there is “no money” to be made in the industry. These guys are making pure financial decisions without examining the offset of the value of the relationship.

“What these guys should be thinking is how can I add value to our reseller? They might not make any money on selling a cartridge because of the logistic costs involved, but the thing is they add value to their customer by saying “hey we aren’t going to make any money but we are willing to do this for you the small guy,” he says.

Cutting resellers is a disappointing strategy for Henderson, because he feels it’s not a holistic approach. He believes that if these guys want to make changes to their distribution strategy they should think about confronting the issues they have with resellers. “Consult the customer about the problems they have with them. If they have a problem with managing stock on a daily basis, suggest to them a weekly time frame,” he says.

“Collaboration is the key to having that strategic relationship. I really do oppose the ‘fait au compli’ way of doing things.”

Reseller challenges

Henderson believes resellers need to put a lot of working in making a successful business – gone are the days of shifting boxes.

He believes a reseller’s greatest challenge is to pick technology trends and aligning themselves with what they predict to be the best vendor.

He says what they don’t want to do is sit there and invest a lot of money into a vendor that is going to go under or bought up.

“Networking is a great example of this. During its hay day you had Cisco, 3Com and Bay Networks. Now look at the list and tell me where these vendors are. Cisco is still around and so is 3Com, but Bay Networks died,” he says.

“All the people who got in early with Cisco have been raking it in. These guys put effort into tracking a company to ensure its stability.”

These guys should never bypass a company’s historical position, says Henderson. If a company has been selling brand X PCs and then starts selling brand X storage, “alarm bells need to start ringing in their head.”

“The channel must ask ‘just because they make PCs why would they make good storage?’ The key to having strength in the channel is being able to make valid informed decisions rather than having a strategy whereby you sold PCs yesterday and then selling storage today.”

Much of his passion for the industry has helped Henderson in his current position at EMC. He joined the company in 2002 and has seen a few changes within the organisation since his appointment.

When Henderson started EMC was just going from a mainly direct-to-sale company with a product range in the traditional storage arena, to implementing a channel strategy and diversifying its portfolio.

In the past couple of years, the company has gone on a shopping spree and acquired, ProActivity Software Solutions, nLayers, Kashya, Network Intelligence and (the still) to be finalised buy out of RSA.

Henderson says EMC has made 23 acquisitions in the last 24 months with 45 percent in hardware and the balance of the business in software and services.

“EMC is very different now with a broad range of offerings. Partners see nothing but upside with acquisitions,” he says.

During his time at EMC, Henderson has helped to grow the team from four to 32 staff members. He is also responsible for implementing the Velocity program, a global initiative, which he says was just a framework.

The program was localised to suit the requirements of the region and a revatilised Velocity program was launched in August due customer feedback about training investment as weak points in the company’s indirect model.

Resellers would be given access to training across its nine technical specialisations for a one-off fee of $9000 and available for 12 months.

It also included an expanded course list to include self-development modules.

Previously, distributors could lose a portion of commission if a channel partner became involved however they can now earn the same amount of commission, for bringing in a reseller.

For a man who was in two minds about entering the IT industry, he has done well for himself. He started his working career at 3M in the eighties, after 15 years of working in various positions he felt it was time fro a career change.

“I was training with the company at a time when businesses were happy to invest in staff long-term, he said. 3M took me across Australia and trained me up in finance, operations and everything else,” he says.

“It was part of the company’s directive to move employees into different roles every two years. I loved working there but I felt it was time to get out of my comfort zone and try something completely different.”

During the 1980s there were two rapidly growing sectors, finance and IT. “I was interested in both these areas and on the one day, I had an offer from a financial institution and one from an IT company. I literally tossed a coin to see which one I would choose - heads for IT and tails for finance,” he says.

The coin landed on heads and Henderson accepted a role a role as marketing director and then moving onto becoming the general manager at Toshiba.

During his time at Toshiba one of the most memorable deals he struck was Computerlac, a Melbourne-based supplier who wanted to sell notebooks to the education sector in Victoria.

“The guy I met from the company believed that every school children should have a notebook, however they were very expensive at the time. I can remember making the deal because the guy was so passionate about what he was doing and shook hands with him on an agreed price. Since then, Computerlac has become a very lucrative business, selling into the education sector in that region.”

In the mid-1990s, Henderson left after seven years landing himself a role as the managing director of AST Computers. At the time, the company was a number five PC company, but crashed into oblivion.

When that happened, he headed to 3Com as the marketing director, but eventually left to pursue a role on the other side of IT - distribution. Henderson accepted the role of category director for Tech Pacific, one of the largest distributors in the Asia Pacific region - before the buy out by Ingram Micro.

Henderson says he has not had any regrets about his career and feels it has only gone from strength to strength. While it might sounds “clichéd”, his philosophy on life is to be positive and ensure the mind, body and spirit is in harmony with one another. “I have a passion for red wine, theatre, people, arts, galleries. I would rather watch a bad live theatre show, then the best program on TV,” he says.

“I remember last year going to a one woman show, where the actor was dressed head to toe in a black cat suit and the audience watched as she went through a mental breakdown. I swear if you came out of that show with dry eyes, then you weren’t human,” he says.

His drive in life can be attributed to having been brought to what he believes is the ‘lucky country’ more than 40 years ago. He moved to Australia with his Dad from Scotland after the death of his mother.

“There are very few countries where you can really take advantage of opportunities like Australia. I’m not just saying that, I’m proud of my Scottish heritage, its part of me and I wake every morning with it,” he says.

“I certainly don’t get out of bed and practice my “ochs” and put on the accent. However I came from Glasgow and it was just a dark, dark, place. It was a poor working area where you had to join gangs to make sure you weren’t beaten up every day.”

Although he concedes he is “better looking” than Billy Connolly, Henderson can understand much of where the comedian’s humour comes from. Both hail from the housing estates in the city of Drumchapel.

“The Scotland I came from is nothing like the Hollywood version, I’m sure there are parts where the heather grows wild along rolling hills, but not where I grew up,” he says. “Although William Wallace is a national hero, if anyone walked around with their face painted blue in Glasgow they would get the shit kicked out of them.”

Henderson is amused by the impact Hollywood has had on the Scottish heritage, since Mel Gibson’s Braveheart film was released. He went back a couple of years ago and went into a shop dedicated to William Wallace memorabilia. “On the tea towels they didn’t have images of the real Wallace, but images of Mel Gibson from the movie Braveheart, I thought it was hilarious,” he says.