Logicalis Names Flood To Head North American Operations

Flood, currently COO, succeeds Mike Cox, who moves to the role of board member of Active Symbols, a spin-off company, and chairman of Logicalis.

The appointment will become effective March 1, 2007, to coincide with the solution provider's new fiscal year.

Flood is based at Logicalis' North American headquarters in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and will report to Ian Cook, who becomes Logicalis Group CEO on March 1, 2007. Cook's promotion was announced Nov. 1.

Flood said he intends to continue the direction that Cox put in place for Logicalis in North America, namely pursuing more acquisitions and focusing on its primary vendors: Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Cisco Systems.

"I'm fortunate to have been part of the team now for five years with Mike. From a strategy standpoint, I don't expect much will change. We've been very successful in organic growth but also significantly as a consolidator in the VAR channel," Flood said.

"We're putting a lot of value into our service offerings to build out our overall solutions. We will continue to do that with managed services and contract consulting," he added.

Logicalis reported $545.6 million in revenue for the fiscal year ended Feb. 28. The company has acquired three IBM partners in the last two years, including Computech Resources, Green Bay, Wis., last September, and is looking for more opportunities, Flood said.

"The United States is a big geography. We're always looking for places where we don't have a significant presence. More importantly, we want to find companies that have the same culture as we have," he said. "And we want to distinguish ourselves from other VAR consolidators in that we don't look for trouble companies or bargains."

As Logicalis grows, it hopes to avoid the pitfalls that confronted other large national solution providers in the 1990s, Flood noted.

"We don't want to be a huge, corporate VAR. There definitely are significant advantages in being a bigger fish. We can leverage the programs our [vendor and distribution] partners put together," he said. "However, it's important not to lose your local focus down in the streets, where the battle for customers' mind share is very personal. You have to stay close to home. We don't want to be a VAR from afar."