This week, 500 resellers joined Wednesday night’s reception in Greenville, South Carolina to kick off the annual SYNNEX Inspire conference. The event was held in the charming host city of Greenville, also the headquarters for SYNNEX Corporation, allowing many of the company’s employees to attend. Wednesday night’s reception was entertaining with a silent disco and “Dan the Pancake Man,” who made look-alike caricature pancakes for attendees.
President and CEO Kevin Murai started Wednesday’s agenda by thanking resellers and vendors for SYNNEX Corp.’s record 3rd quarter financial performance. A hot topic of conversation was the acquisition of the Westcon-Comstor business, the largest acquisition in the company’s history with virtually no overlap between the businesses. Kevin pointed out the most exciting areas with the addition of the Westcon-Comstor business, to include a deep understanding of the security and UCC markets, as well as scalable yet focused expertise, along with an expansion of the global footprint.
He also talked about some of the current market trends, including security, cloud, and enterprise mobility. Kevin touched on digital transformation and how it’s driving the internet of things, while making an interesting point about software-defined everything and said “We will continue to sell hardware, but be sure you’re leading your customers in a software-defined world.”
On Thursday, we heard from keynotes Red Hat, Lenovo, Verizon, HP and Hewlett-Packard Packard Enterprise, and the themes centered around digital transformation, re-inventing solutions, and partnering for success. The Leaders of the Roundtable breakout sessions included discussions on applications of technology in the classroom, on the street, and at work. Resources like a Greenville retired police chief and a retired teacher were brought in to help define real-life use cases for vendors and customers.
The Hall of Inspiration opened Thursday afternoon, where approximately 125 SYNNEX vendors showcased their value to the channel in leading business transformation for end customers. Today we’ll be hearing from Cisco’s Andrew Sage, VP Americas Distribution, and closing reception featuring REO Speedwagon – should be fun! It’s been exciting to get a glimpse into our newfound partnership with SYNNEX and what the future will hold for the company, and I’m certain we will be stronger together.
