Walters and Ingram: the exit interview

CRN: Don't you have non-compete clauses in your contract?

Jay is a very reasonable man, but he's a very competitive man. He and I have agreed on some pretty tight parameters around competitors. But there's a lot more in the channel than distribution. There's a lot of vendors and there's a lot of resellers as well. So I think there's more than enough scope for John Walters to find an opportunity there somewhere.

CRN: It would be easier for you to go to a reseller or vendor instead of a distributor at this stage?

That's right. And look, I think what John Walters would want for his own integrity... I mean, I had four years at LAN1 and then I was headhunted to Tech Pacific which you could say was competitive. But if you look at the relative sizes of Tech Pacific and LAN1 in those days it was chalk and cheese. I mean, you know, LAN1 had just hit $100 million and Tech Pacific was well over the billion.

Obviously Tech Pacific was in a lot of areas in the channel. LAN1 wasn't. We were very focussed on networking and starting to get into security whereas Tech Pacific was across the whole [channel].

So I saw that as a huge opportunity and the actual percentage of revenue where Tech Pacific and LAN1 actually competed was something like 4 percent of Tech Pacific's revenue, which was nothing.

To go from Ingram into a competitor after seven and a half years; I honestly don't know whether I could do that and hold my head high. You never say never but certainly I wouldn't bounce straight into one, no. I'd clearly be looking for a role in a vendor or a reseller.

CRN: What do you want to do?

I'd like to get into a great business that wants to go somewhere. And maybe some of the cross-structural experience and some of the experiences I've had in different segments could add some value to that. I like being reasonably broad so I'd like to get into a broader role than just a very niche role.

I'm keen to have a look around and see what's out there. I'm not going to rush into a decision, I don't need to rush into a decision. It's a case of making sure it's the right thing for the company and the right thing for me, I suppose.

It's definitely going to be in Australia because I enjoy watching my sons play rugby on the weekend too much.

CRN: Which vendors or resellers do you admire or which are doing a good job?

I'll let that one go through to the keeper. I think that there's lots of really good resellers out there- we've dealt with seven thousand active resellers through this downturn. At the end of the day some really good resellers are there who are focussed on their business, they've worked hard on the business to understand the structure and the cost and their go-to-market differentiation strategies.

They've worked on their branding, their positioning in the market and a lot of those resellers are growing at 30, 40 and 50 percent and making good money for the business.

Next page: The impact of niche distribution