Ingram Micro has hired the U.S. president of its VentureTech Network group of VARs to lead sales efforts in its Advanced Computing Division.
Jim Veraldi, who headed VTN as well as held the title executive vice president at Micro Strategies, a Denville, N.J.-based VAR, has joined Ingram Micro as senior director of sales after 21 years with the VAR.
Veraldi said he started working on an exit strategy from Micro Strategies last fall and began looking around for employment at a larger company to kickoff the "second half" of his career.
"Whether it's another 10 or 15 or 20 years, I wanted to do something different. I worked in corporate American early on in my career and I thought that would be a good place to go back to," Veraldi said, who worked at Unisys and Exxon before joining Micro Strategies.
He said he also pursued jobs with some vendors but chose Ingram Micro because of the relationships he's built with the distributor as part of the VentureTech Network.
"This was all my doing. I like challenges and at this juncture with cloud and services and hosting, I think distributors are at the forefront. Ingram was one of the top guys on my list. I've gotten to know a lot of the [Ingram] executives in the organization from top to bottom. That's what I was looking for."
Veraldi said his former partner, Anthony Bongiovanni, wasn't thrilled with Veraldi's decision to leave, but they worked out a settlement and remain on good terms.
"We are friends first and there's nothing within the organization they need to do differently," Veraldi said. "The company is in good shape financially and operationally. The buyout went through smoothly. And Micro Strategies is now an [Advanced Computing Division] customer."
Veraldi was a popular VAR within VentureTech, especially within that group's Big Apple chapter. Last fall, he shared with CRN some memories of trying to work through the catastrophic events of Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center was destroyed.
Veraldi will report to Scott Zahl, vice president and general manager of the Advanced Computing Division and is responsible for sales across enterprise software, storage, virtualization and infrastructure.
"He brings 20 years-plus experience selling data center infrastructure to the market but beyond that he has a history of running a successful VAR business and has a unique perspective of how we should engage with the customer community and how to bring our resources to them more effectively," Zahl said.
Veraldi is not the first VAR to buy out of the company he helped grow. In January, former EvolveTech CEO Dave Sobel announced he had sold that company to go to work for Level Platforms, the managed services platform vendor.
