MicroAge’s New CEO On AI, Cybersecurity, Cloud And What It Means To Be A Solution Provider

‘I call us a solution provider. We do it with services. We do it with product. Yeah, we sell products, but in the clients’ interest versus the manufacturers’ interest. They’re all great people trying to sell everything they got in their portfolio, because that’s all they can. Cisco can’t tell you to buy stuff from other vendors. We can, and we can help the client find the right solution to get the outcome they’re looking for,’ says new MicroAge CEO Larry Gentry.

MicroAge is leaning hard into its identity as a solutions provider rather than a traditional VAR, a distinction new CEO Larry Gentry says is critical as customers grapple with AI, cybersecurity and cloud complexity.

While the Phoenix-based company still sells hardware and software from major vendors, Gentry told CRN, the value of MicroAge, ranked No. 115 in CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500, lies in its ability to assemble best-of-breed solutions across multiple suppliers and wrap them with services to deliver specific business outcomes.

Gentry, who officially took over as CEO on Dec. 1 after serving as an executive vice president and running multiple business units in the company, said deep expertise in Microsoft, data center infrastructure, cybersecurity and endpoints is at the core of MicroAge’s strategy.

“Foremost, we are really good at Microsoft,” he said. “Most of our clients use Microsoft with their business applications, and so we have made huge investments in it. We manage services around it. We do implementations. Most of our clients are using Microsoft tools to run their business. But the reality is, most of them are not experts at Microsoft.”

Data center capabilities are also regaining prominence as AI drives some workloads back on-premises or into colocation facilities. While cloud remains central to MicroAge’s portfolio, Gentry said AI’s security requirements and early-stage deployments are fueling a resurgence in demand for well-architected data centers.

MicroAge’s AI practice, now entering its second year, reflects what Gentry described as widespread customer uncertainty about where to begin. The company focuses on readiness work—data consolidation, tagging, security and architecture—before moving customers into pilots or production. Through services such as its “Envisioning” offering, MicroAge helps clients define use cases, build data lakes and deploy AI workloads either in the cloud or on-prem, often end to end.

Looking ahead to 2026—MicroAge’s 50th year in business—Gentry said priorities center on double-digit growth driven by AI, cybersecurity and cloud.

“Clients all want to talk about AI,” he said. “They all want to talk about cybersecurity, and they all are now wanting to understand how to cost-optimize their cloud.”

There’s a lot going on at MicroAge. To learn more, read CRN’s entire conversation with Gentry which has been lightly edited for clarity.

How do you define MicroAge?

When I explain to clients or prospects what we do, we are a solutions provider. We are literally helping clients figure out how to move their company forward with the solutions we have. We’re really good at a lot of things. We’re not good at everything. We’re centered around IT and how it can enable the business. But people want to call us a VAR. They want to say we sell stuff. But really, we are a solutions provider. One of the things I’ve told a lot of people is, if you work for HP or Dell, you go to every client and say, ‘Everything I have in my toolbox is going to solve your problem perfectly.’ And I like to say they’re all lying just a little bit because nobody is in the number one position in every single solution that’s out there. Our job is to help our 1,000 clients with the solutions that we’ve had success with to get ‘x’ done. We can say, ‘I’ve done that 35 times, and I’m going to get you this from Cisco, and this from HP, and this from Dell, and I’m going to put it together with our team and our services people and make it work to get the outcome you’re looking for.’ And that’s what we do. That’s why I call us a solution provider. We do it with services. We do it with product. Yeah, we sell products, but in the clients’ interest versus the manufacturers’ interest. They’re all great people trying to sell everything they got in their portfolio, because that’s all they can. Cisco can’t tell you to buy stuff from other vendors. We can help the client find the right solution to get the outcome they’re looking for.

You said that there are some things that you do really, really well. What are some of those things?

Foremost, we are really good at Microsoft. Most of our clients use Microsoft with their business applications, and so we have made huge investments in it. We manage services around it. We do implementations. Most of our clients are using Microsoft tools to run their business. But the reality is, most of them are not experts at Microsoft. They’re experts in their businesses. And they need people like us to answer the questions, ‘Well, what should I do next? How should I deploy this? How should I size this? Help me figure out how to lower my cost with my Microsoft licensing.’ So Microsoft probably needs us to be on top of it. It’s not our largest offering by volume, but it’s clearly the most important to our clients, and it’s important to them that we be experts at that.

What else?

We’re really, really good at data center, and we’re really good at endpoint, and amazing at cybersecurity. It’s been growing like crazy over the last seven, eight years since we started our cyber practice. But I think data center is becoming more important to clients. There was a shift a couple of years ago to cloud. Cloud is still important, and we do a lot with Azure and Amazon Cloud and Google Cloud. But with AI, people are starting to bring workloads back into their data centers or into colos, partly from a security standpoint, partly because they’re also starting small with their AI projects. So we’re seeing a resurgence of the data center. We’ve always been really good at it, but it wasn’t quite as important as businesses shifted to the cloud. Our Azure capabilities and our Microsoft and our cloud capabilities were really on the forefront, but we’re seeing repatriation where businesses are starting to bring workloads back into their data centers. Not because cloud doesn’t work. It does. But it’s the AI component that’s moving people. So we’re really good at data center architecture, working with lots of manufacturers to make sure they get the right architecture. …

We do a lot of endpoints, because everybody has endpoints, right? Those are the easy things. But we’re really good at data center. We’re really good at cyber security. We have an AI practice that’s been growing like crazy over the last two years because most clients don’t know where to get started. I mean, literally, most of them really don’t know where to get started. So we help them with the things they need to have in place before they start AI projects. You’ve read the statistics that 80 percent of AI projects fail the first year. The client wasn’t ready. They tried to do it on their own and they weren’t ready. They didn’t consolidate their data. They didn’t have it tagged. They didn’t have a clean data source. They didn’t secure it.

Has MicroAge invested much in its AI practice?

We have an AI practice. It’s fairly new. We’re rolling into our second year with it. We have data architects, data engineers, business analysts, power platform people, so yeah, we’ll help them get started. We have a service offering we call Envisioning. For a lot of our clients, we start with a small service offering to help them define what they’re trying to do and why. A lot of them need that help, but they don’t know where to start. We’ll go in and create their data lakes. We’ll make sure their data is clean and so they know when it’s coming from three sources like their financials, their ERP, and their CRM systems that all the data is clean and tagged. Some of them will use that as a learning for themselves when we go in and work alongside them. And they may pick up the ball and run with it after that, or they may take on part of it themselves. But most of them aren’t ready today. So we’ll act. We’ll put the project in the cloud. We’ll put it on-prem. We’ll do the work for them to meet their goals. We’ll write code to create bots for them for whatever it is they’re trying to get done. We’ll do everything from start to finish.

What about MicroAge attracted you to take over as CEO on December 1?

I was already an executive VP, and I was running two of our sales divisions and our services delivery organization. I’ve been here for about three and a half years. During that time, I also oversaw our cyber practice and our presales engineers. Literally, other than HR and marketing, I pretty much have managed each of the business groups over the last three and a half years. So when our CEO decided to step down as CEO, it was natural. The board looked at me and said, ‘Hey, Larry’s been here. He knows our company.’ I had been a CEO of a smaller company [called cStor] that I sold to MicroAge three and a half years ago. Okay, [MicroAge] is a lot bigger. But I think it was easier to get somebody inside the company that had done the job and had the comfort level for employees. They know me, they know what I’m capable of, and they know that I know them and I know what we’re doing. So there’ll be some shifts in direction as a company, but we won’t be making wholesale changes, not like if I came from the outside. I’ve been involved in decision making and the path we’re currently on.

Why did former CEO Rob Zack step down?

He’s moved on to a different role as our vice chair. He was over at my house last night for dinner and drinks, so we’re still friends. The good news for me and for the company is his knowledge vibrates all the time. We still have him as the vice chair. He’s really in an advisory role. He’s looking at mergers and acquisitions and at how we can grow this company exponentially. And he knows the company pretty well. I can still lean on him when I have questions or concerns.

One of the big issues this year from a macroeconomic point of view is tariffs. Given that MicroAge still sells a lot of hardware even though you’re focused on solutions, how have the tariffs impacted your business?

It was a lot to do about nothing, and it really has not impacted the year. But there were different sales cycles in 2025. In March and April and even February, clients were like, ‘Oh, we gotta wait. Gotta wait and see what’s gonna happen.’ Everyday was 100 percent tariffs, 200 percent, OK, no, delay that. So clients were struggling to pull the trigger on projects. We saw in Q2 and early Q3 a lot of people holding back because they were trying to figure out, what does this tariff really mean. What does the pricing look like. And so they were unsure. ‘Do I make a decision now? And is there a tariff that goes in place before the product shows up so all of a sudden I now have to pay 75 more.’ We saw a lot of people pause. They didn’t say no on the projects. They wanted to proceed, but they were cautious. And I get it, because every day it was something new out of our government about what the tariffs were going to look like. And then in late Q3, people started spending money on all the projects that they really needed to get done for business.

Late Q3 and Q4 are going to be off the charts. Some of it’s a pickup from the things clients didn’t do in early Q2 and early Q3. So it’s made the year a little choppier than what it would normally be from, you know, if you look at the chart of what the sales growth looks like, it looks like this. It’s a little choppier than I would like, but it’s still going to be a growth year for us. It’s going to be very profitable, a record profit for us as a company. But it was just weird. People were cautious in the middle of the year, but they’re not cautious now. They’re doing all the same things that they need to do to move their business forward.

MicroAge is a private company, but can you talk a little bit about the revenue and profitability?

I can talk about the range, but yeah, I would prefer not to go into details. I will tell you we will see a record revenue and a record profit in 2025. We’re less than $500 million and we’re more than $250 million. I’m just going to leave it at that.

You said your former company was acquired by MicroAge. How often does MicroAge do acquisitions? What is your acquisition strategy?

We acquired two companies in the last four-and-a-half years. One of them was my own company, Custom Storage (cStor), a small solution provider. We also acquired a Microsoft services company about four and a half years ago, which really jump-started our entry to becoming a great Microsoft partner, one of the top 30 in the country now. That was a strategic acquisition. Our private equity group is actively looking for acquisitions. Some of the multiples right now are a little crazy. For example, we’ve been trying to buy a cybersecurity services company, and they want high multiples of revenue even though they haven’t made a profit yet. That doesn’t make really good sense to us. AI companies are overvalued right now, but the valuations are starting to come down a little bit. We’re also looking at service providers to help us provide a better, more complete service offerings to our clients. We’re actively looking for those. Rob Zack, our former CEO and now the vice chair, is … actively looking for acquisitions rather than just sitting back waiting for the opportunities to come. So we haven’t been super active, two acquisitions in four-and-a-half years, but we are actively looking for things that fit where we think we can grow, or where our clients need us to grow.

What are your strategic priorities for 2026?

First, I’m looking for double-digit growth. It’s out there. I’m looking for us to really focus on three things: AI, cyber, and cloud. And it’s funny. Five years ago, you would have called each of those a separate initiative. They are so woven together today. You really can’t do AI without cybersecurity. You really can’t do cloud without cybersecurity. Most cloud providers say cybersecurity is a shared responsibility. They’ll go, ‘Oh, Microsoft will take care of my security.’ No, they won’t. If you’re doing nothing, they will do more than what you are doing. But it’s a shared response. They’re woven together. So we say AI, cybersecurity, and cloud, but they’re all three parts of most clients’ initiatives, and you can’t separate them. Cyber security plays into cloud and plays into your AI, and they are so woven together. So those are our three really big priorities: to get better and to grow the business exponentially in those areas, because clients need more help there. Nobody really wants to talk about their servers. Yeah, they want HPE or Dell, and we try and sell them stuff. But clients all want to talk about AI. They all want to talk about cybersecurity, and they all are now wanting to understand how to cost-optimize their cloud. …

In 2026, we will be celebrating 50 years of being in business. Our founder, Jeff McKeever, was actually labeled as the godfather of the reselling business back 50 years ago when he started. It’s sad that he passed away about a year and a half ago. There’s not many solution providers out there who could have been doing this for 50 years. We have people who have been here for 30 or 35 years doing solution selling for clients. We have a ton of experience to be able to lean on to help clients who are trying to navigate their road. But for us, it’s AI, it’s cyber, and it’s cloud.