Jim Kavanaugh: WWT’s Biggest Bets On Cisco, Dell And Tech Trends

World Wide Technology CEO Jim Kavanaugh tells CRN about his $14 billion company’s big vendor bets and WWT’s technology investments that will drive growth in the second half of 2022.

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.

How big is WWT’s investment in Cisco right now and why?

Cisco has done a good job bringing new product to bear, relative to their core, that they’ve got great demand for. We’ve seen really good growth with Cisco.

So a lot of things that they’re doing in regard to their core, but then [they are] adding to it via acquisitions that they’ve made in regard to new analytics and being able to bring a more robust capability of solutions to the market.

[Cisco CEO] Chuck Robbins 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.

The biggest challenge Chuck has at this point is supply chain issues, which he’s working on feverishly. But overall, in regard to also moving to not only hardware but more of a recurring revenue-type of stream around software—that’s been a big focus.

Obviously, there are areas of a lot of competition.

If you look at voice video relative to Zoom, and different things that have happened in the market, there’s a lot of disruption happening. We’ll see how that all plays out, but overall we’ve seen really strong growth with Cisco.

Our Cisco backlog is very strong, and the activity is very strong. So we don’t see that changing.

I know Chuck continues to look at different ways to continue to build out their core, but also to add to that as they continue to have had very good success over the last seven years since he’s been in the position. … Cisco is our largest partner and we continue to invest and grow collaboratively with Cisco in a significant way.

How important is Dell Technologies to WWT and why?

[Dell CEO] Michael Dell is just a fascinating individual on so many different fronts. I mean, he’s done so many things with Dell in just transforming the business from where it was when it originally started, then becoming a private company, a public company, private company, etc. and the acquisition of EMC and VMware.

A lot of the things that Dell continues to do to invest in the business and grow with a broad base of infrastructure-type capabilities are continuing to expand and include opportunities around cloud, around driving edge capabilities, are pretty fascinating.

Michael is just a very brilliant entrepreneur, innovator and leader all kind of wrapped up into one, which is pretty unique. He has no need financially to be working, obviously, but he has a passion for what he’s doing. So they continue to do well.

At the end of the day, that’s what you need in those positions. Because the market is changing very quickly.

We all need to be thinking about how we disrupt our own business to make sure that we’re continuing to not become complacent. Because the market and what the customers want continues to evolve at a fairly rapid rate.

Dell has done very well. We’ll continue to partner very closely with [Dell] as we move forward.

What is one big investment for WWT in 2022 to increase sales?

If you look at helping customers design and build out their IT infrastructure—it’s very much a hybrid environment today. So what’s being done on-premises, what’s being done in the cloud, what’s being done at the edge, and how all that works—has not made life any easier for CIOs and CTOs to evaluate and figure out what’s the best and optimal solution for them.

So we’ve also invested significantly in our services practice, which is a really a doubling and tripling down of our investments in there.

And that covers a broad spectrum of everything from management consulting at a very high level, to bringing on the Accenture- and Bain Consulting-type individuals, to big data scientists around AI and machine learning. Also [we have] our cloud practice and cloud experts, both from an advisory and technical perspective. For cyber, we have a general IT infrastructure but also a blended approach around strategic resourcing.

We believe in providing optimal solutions for customers.

We’ve got to provide them a capability of not only full-time subject matter experts, but a blended approach around onshore-offshore kind of capabilities that provides them an overall more cost-effective blended approach to delivering some of these complex projects.

What are some other IT vendors WWT is placing bets on right now?

Nvidia is a fascinating company.

[Nvidia President and CEO] Jensen [Huang] is fascinating. He’s a brilliant guy that has done some amazing things with Nvidia. We’ve really invested early on with Nvidia in regard to their GPUs and some of the things we’re doing around AI and machine learning.

At the same time, we’re a strategic partner with Intel.

I know [Intel CEO] Pat [Gelsinger] very well with him being at VMware for a number of years. He’s taken over Intel and he’s working his tail off over there, looking at some really big bets in regard to investments in the Fab Labs [Intel’s semiconductor factories] and things both domestically and in Europe that he’s still working through.

We’re not lacking any strategic partnerships.

Our position at World Wide is to be this independent adviser on behalf of our customers in regard to the technology landscape and to be able to help them more quickly assess and determine what technology is best suited for them.

With all the demand around security and cloud, and just incredible complexity demands—there are large growth opportunities.

What’s another major investment area for WWT that will drive growth?

We have a huge focus on the application development side around building out mobile apps, websites— just really customer, fan and patient applications that change the employee experience, fan experience, customer experience, that is directly connected to the technology infrastructure.

We see those worlds continuing to come together in an accelerated way: the back-office IT infrastructure aligning with the lines of business to deliver these digital transformations to truly transform their business digitally. And that’s just happening everywhere.

We are also spending a lot of our time leveraging the Advanced Technology Center that we have as this innovation incubator, but also as an innovation assessor of technology products.

Then building it into integrated architectural solutions, call it a multi-landscape of OEMs’ technologies, to drive these integrated solutions for our customers on the infrastructure side.

As WWT’s longtime leader, what is your vision for the company as constant market disruptions seem to be the norm now?

I see a ton of opportunity here. There are times like this of uncertainty and challenge in market disruptions that really expose companies, organizations and leadership to see what they can do.

This is an exciting time. Yes, there are challenges that we’re dealing with, but the entire industry is dealing with the market uncertainty, the stock market, supply chain issues, chip constraints, the great resignation—you could take all that and be like, ‘Oh my God, this is horrible.’ I’m like, ‘This is the way it works.’

As leaders, we have to paint that picture within the company that says, ‘Yes, we’ll deal with these challenges. But we’re in a really, really strong position.’

The opportunity out there in front of us [is] based on the value that we bring today, the challenges that the customers are dealing with 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.

Give me your bullish thoughts on WWT’s future.

We have foundational pieces of capabilities and solutions—both on the IT infrastructure side that touches both on-premises, data center networks and global networks—but also in the cloud, at the edge, as 5G really gets rolled out. And what does [all of] that mean to applications and the network, and securing the network in your environment, but also aligning with the business? That’s what I find very exciting and fascinating—is bringing those together.

We’re spending more time with line-of-business presidents and the CEOs of companies in regard to their thought process and guiding them to what their digital strategy is and how technology will be a strategic enabler to driving not just technology, but their business strategy.

So bringing all those things together, I see a tremendous opportunity for us to continue to lean in, do it very prudently based on things that are happening but also very aggressively.

With all that in mind, we’re continuing to have a relentless focus on our culture, our people and making sure that we are listening to our people as we continue to grow around the world to make sure that we’re doing the right things to support them.