Raymund Ready To Exit CEO Post

“A lot of my friends have been asking me for a long time when I was going to take more time off,” Raymund said after announcing he would relinquish that title once a search committee finds a successor in about four to six months. He will remain as chairman.

For years, Raymund begged off the retirement question, citing that he still enjoyed the job. Now, he said, he intends to spend more time with his wife and two children, both of whom will be in college next year. “We&'ve got some vacation plans,” he said.

Solution providers said Raymund had little left to prove as CEO of the Clearwater, Fla., distributor.

“When you get to that point in [your] career, with the success he&'s had, you stick around until you set out what you wanted to accomplish,” said Dave Gilden, partner and COO of Acuity Solutions, Tampa, Fla., and a member of Tech Data&'s TechSelect organization. “When they&'re done, they&'re done. My guess is he set out to do something and did it. He&'s obviously still passionate about the business. He did a great job over the years. You&'d be hard-pressed to find anybody to say any different.”

Raymund joined his father Ed Raymund&'s company in 1981 as operations manager, when Tech Data was a $2 million company with about a dozen employees. Now it employs about 8,500 people with about $20 billion in revenue. He became CEO in 1986 and chairman in 1991 when his father retired.

“Steve has been an outstanding leader—not only of Tech Data, but of the channel. He has provided stability, vision and energy to help the IT channel over the last 25 years,” said Tim Curran, CEO of the Global Technology Distribution Council and a former executive at Tech Data.

Raymund has long fought to get vendors to sell more products through the channel, dating back to Curran&'s days at Panasonic prior to his Tech Data stint. “We achieved the No. 1 position in the printer business and helped build its channel with the help of Tech Data,” Curran said.

Gilden expects Tech Data to maintain its level of customer service because Raymund has built a strong team around him, and he hopes the next CEO will continue Tech Data&'s strategy of specialization.

“The boutique distributors out there have a leg up on some of these [broadline] guys because they&'re honed in on certain verticals or technology areas,” he said. “I&'d like to see them continue on to specialize their SBUs and move them past a marketing mechanism and into even more of a functional cohesive group that adds a lot of value.”