Building From Within: Tech Data Promotes Three VPs
Peterson assumes the old position of Murray Wright, who was named last month as president of the Americas region for Tech Data. Bartlett, formerly vice president of the Cisco Solutions Group, assumes Peterson’s role leading AIS.
Peterson joined Tech Data in 1996. In addition to leading Tech Data’s inside and nationwide field sales teams, he also is responsible for the company’s technical services organization. “Moving Pete into the SVP of sales role was a natural move. He’s been here 14 years and has seen a lot of different parts of the business and been successful at every one,” said Wright of Peterson. “He brings a broad base of experience to the assignment, including formerly being the vice president of sales in the east, which is our largest region, and starting and building the AIS division.”
Peterson said he expects to continue the initiatives that Wright started as the head of sales at the Clearwater, Fla.-based distributor.
“We’ve had great success in the last three or four years under Murray. I’ll pick up the ball where he left it," Peterson said. "My most recent experiences are more closely supporting the vendor side, through emerging technologies or a different way to approach business with partners. We uniquely understand the needs to support and be more efficient and effective with vendors.”
Bartlett joined Tech Data in 2006 as vice president of network product marketing until Tech Data formed the Cisco Solutions Group.
“Chuck Bartlett has had great success in other organizations and he’s done a tremendous job with our Cisco group. I think they’ve got life insurance with Chuck at Cisco. He’s done an awesome job. We want to maintain the integrity of AIS. It needs to be run differently and have the flexibility as a business within a business. That’s the approach we going to take. A key relationship there is with Cisco and that’s why Chuck is the right guy for the role into AIS” Wright said.
Bartlett spent 18 years at National Semiconductor and five years at Molex finding solutions for OEMs. He said those skills are a good fit for AIS, where he’ll continue to look to help customers solve business problems for their end users.
“That’s the approach within AIS we’ve been taking, solution sales around the data center and architecture around the data center. This approach is familiar to me. That’s what I hope to push going forward,” Bartlett said. Quaglia, who led the company’s U.S. product marketing and marketing services divisions since 2007, has duties now that cover consolidated U.S. marketing and vendor partner relations, including the AIS division.
“It makes sense for all marketing to report into one leader and that leader is Joe Quaglia,” said Wright. “It allows us better alignment with other vendor initiatives while maintaining the independence of AIS. Joe has the flexibility to move people, vendor lines and he’ll be looking to enhance those vendor lines.”
Quaglia said his new role will allow him to take a strategic look into all parts of Tech Data’s business in addition to having tactical, day-to-day visibility too.
“I’ve been spending quite a bit of time around business strategy and opportunities to expand our capabilities to open new routes to market for our vendors,” Quaglia said. “Within the AIS organization, I have incredible confidence in Chuck. Pete did and excellent job launching the unit and now it’s up to Chuck to take it to the next level.”