Lenovo Woos Dell Vet To Lead North American Channel: Exclusive

Wade McFarland – who was Dell’s VP of North America Channel Sales – is now filling the role exited by Lenovo’s Rob Cato, who now oversees business transformation inside Lenovo’s Infrastructure Solutions Group.

Lenovo has hired a new channel chief for North America, plucking Wade McFarland from Dell Technologies to take on the partner-facing role.

McFarland (pictured) joined Lenovo as vice president, North American channel, effective this past Wednesday. As vice president of channel at Lenovo, McFarland will be responsible for leading the “One Lenovo” mission across all segments for its channel partners, the company said.

McFarland spent the past 23 years at Dell Technologies, eventually rising to vice president of North America channel sales, North America distribution and channel acquisition.

Partners for both Dell and Lenovo were wowed by the announcement.

“I know Wade well. He is awesome!” John Rohrer, vice president of enterprise sales with Houston-based solution provider AMSYS, a Gold 360 Lenovo partner, told CRN in a direct message via LinkedIn. “It’s a great idea to bring in new blood.”

“(This is) massive for (Lenovo’s) data center and services business,” Rohrer told CRN. “He can bring the operational, sales and marketing pedigree from Dell to drive velocity through Lenovo’s Channel. Wade will be great to bring that all together with the amazing tech from Lenovo.”

C.R. Howdyshell, CEO of Advizex, a Fulcrum IT Partners company and a Dell Titanium partner, said McFarland is a channel stalwart, and called the announcement “BIG news.”

“He totally is the real deal,” Howdyshell told CRN via text message. “BIG news. Have to say. He knows the channel and disty. He has a great reputation and executes for the channel!”

For the last eight years, McFarland has worked closely with tier two distributors as well as Dell’s channel partners to drive business outcomes for customers, he wrote on his LinkedIn biography.

“I am focused on creating a vision for the future where we can help our partners and customers leverage digital transformation that is accelerating growth and opportunity (and building strategies and plans to act on that vision),” he stated on LinkedIn.

Lenovo’s long-serving North American channel partner Rob Cato left the role after seven years for a leadership position inside the company’s infrastructure business. There he plans to help accelerate the hypergrowth the company has seen among its data center and high-performance compute products.

Cato’s new title is vice president of business transformation for Lenovo’s Infrastructure Solutions Group. He will work with Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, Lenovo’s president of the Infrastructure Solutions Group.

Lenovo’s server business saw massive revenue growth of 63 percent during fiscal year 2024. During the most recent quarter ended June 30, the company won infrastructure sales of $4.3 billion, up 36 percent year over year, the company reported last week.

“It was an opportunity to impact the part of our business that has been good, but it needs to be maybe a little bit more stable, a little bit more consistent, and we need to get the channel motion going,” Cato told CRN earlier this month. “I think that’s what attracted me probably the most, it was really focused on channel and customers, and how do we deliver the right value to them in our infrastructure business over a sustained period of time?”

A Lenovo spokesperson said over the coming weeks, McFarland will work with Cato in transitioning to the new role.