Lenovo’s Rob Cato: Channel ‘Very Resilient’ Part Of Strategy Amid Uncertainty

‘The channel became a very resilient part of our strategy in that through all of the uncertainty in the North American market, they were really there to help us and help the customers manage through that. And so we leaned on them very heavily. They responded,’ Lenovo’s channel chief, Rob Cato, tells CRN.

Lenovo recorded huge gains in sales of its IT infrastructure as well as growth in PC sales last quarter — against a backdrop of global trade uncertainty and volatile financial markets — by leaning into its partners, channel chief Rob Cato told CRN.

“The channel became a very resilient part of our strategy in that through all of the uncertainty in the North American market, they were really there to help us and help the customers manage through that,” Cato said after the company’s earnings last month. “And so, we leaned on them very heavily. They responded.”

Lenovo North America President Ryan McCurdy told CRN that with the company’s annual earnings up 21 percent to $69.1 billion, the company is on track to deliver near-record growth with strong demand from cloud service providers, high-performance computing, public sector markets and the financial markets.

He said Lenovo’s channel approach is key to driving that.

“Our partners are helping us deliver one of the best years in our history,” McCurdy told CRN after the company’s earnings last month. “When you look at us integrating AI into everything we’re doing, when you look at the business results that we’ve been generating for the last, six, eight quarters, and then you look at the channel comfort that they have working with a partner like Lenovo, over the long term, that that’s really a powerful combination.”

Lenovo’s infrastructure business won record business during its last fiscal year, with 63 percent growth and the company’s ThinkSystem SC777 V4 Neptune server line, a liquid-cooled device, has been “resonating with partners,” Cato told CRN. During the company’s partner conference last quarter, he said he talked with 80 channel resellers and integrators during individual meetings and infrastructure was high on the agenda.

“It’s the first time in my seven, eight years in the channel where I would sit down with a partner and they proactively brought up our infrastructure business and what we’re doing in that space,” he said. “How do they become more integrated with us? What else do they need to do? How do we invest in them? It was the first time in a long time that I’ve had partners really reach out and want us to talk about something other than our client business.”

Cato said the Lenovo 360 platform has seen greater adoption with partners around the world with 57,000 training certifications created last year, a 55 percent jump year over year. He said Lenovo 360 is centered on connecting, enabling and growing a partner’s business.

“That enablement piece is making sure that we’ve got training and education out there for our partners to be able to leverage, to help them talk the right language to their customers to be able to carry those conversations,” he said. “We’re really seeing strong growth around partners wanting to learn from us, and you know, us being able to provide the right technology and solutions through those accreditations as well.”

Cato said a big part of the ask from partners is around AI training, including enablement in the sale of AI PCs and infrastructure. He said Lenovo 360 has a small number of those classes now, but he expects to increase the number of those by the end of the year.

“What we’re hearing from partners [is] they want more of that enablement. They want more training around AI, not only just PC, but also in the infrastructure in the data center to help customers be able to manage their transitions,” he said. “They’re getting those conversations and questions today. It happened early in the cloud space. It’s now moving into the enterprise and SMB space, and we want to make sure that we’re helping the partners to carry those conversations.”

Cato said Lenovo has high expectations for next year around the sale of its PCs, servers and storage. He said the only way that Lenovo can remain competitive is by delivering profitability to its partners and making the company easy for partners to do business with by getting easy access to pricing and sales enablement and to leverage MDF.

“One of the things that I’m really focused on as the channel leader at Lenovo, is helping our partners spend more time with their customers, and less time trying to figure out how to do business with Lenovo,” he said.