Jim Kavanaugh: Here’s Where WWT Is Investing To Drive Growth

Industry legend Jim Kavanaugh has built World Wide Technology into a $14 billion solution provider powerhouse by knowing where to place WWT’s technology bets and investments in the ever-changing IT landscape.

“We all need to be thinking about how we disrupt our own business to make sure that we’re continuing to not become complacent,” said WWT CEO Kavanaugh in an interview with CRN. “Because the market and what the customers want continues to evolve at a fairly rapid rate.”

The St. Louis-based global IT giant has been consistently growing sales and its now 8,000-strong employee head count over the past several years as customers of all shapes and sizes rely on WWT for critical IT and digital transformation needs.

The opportunity for WWT is bigger than ever as enterprises are being challenged by IT complexity in the new hybrid, multi-cloud world.

“The challenges that the customers are dealing with [are] around how do they evaluate and assess the onslaught, the never-ending barrage of technology coming at them. And the need to do this as efficiently and effectively as possible to really transform their business into this new digital world—that’s the opportunity in front of us both domestically and globally,” said Kavanaugh.

World Wide Technology is one of the largest channel partners of IT titans such as Dell Technologies, Cisco Systems and VMware, to name a few.

Kavanaugh On Michael Dell And Chuck Robbins

Kavanaugh is placing major bets on partners like Cisco and Dell, in part due to the company’s leaders in Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell and Cisco Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins.

“Chuck has been an employee there for 20-plus years and a CEO for seven years now. Obviously, he’s got his hands full with a lot of things going on, but I think Chuck has done a really good job continuing to reinvent Cisco and move them into specific areas that are complementary to their core, which is networking,” said Kavanaugh.

WWT’s CEO touted Michael Dell as a “brilliant entrepreneur, innovator and leader,” all wrapped into one. “He has no need financially to be working, obviously, but he has a passion for what he’s doing,” he said.

In an interview with CRN, Jim Kavanaugh talks about WWT’s major bets on Cisco, Dell, Nvidia, Intel and others, as well as his company’s investments to boost its services business and growing application development strategy.