CDN’s Top 25 Newsmakers #25-21

CDN’s annual review of the unforgettable men and women who made impactful news in the Canadian channel community. This year’s list is comprised of 25 top executives from solution providers, the vendor community, distribution, government, and people who really matter to the Canadian channel. Plus, check out the special bonus newsmaker.

This week we’ll be compiling a slideshow of our Top 25 Newsmakers List. Click on to see our Newsmakers #25-21, plus our bonus newsmaker.

Bonus Newsmaker

Dave MacDonald, CEO at Softchoice

By: Paolo Del Nibletto

After 16 years of unprecedented success in the solution provider channel Dave MacDonald is retiring as the President and CEO of Softchoice.

During his tenure Softchoice won an unprecedented seven consecutive CDN No. 1 Solution Provider of the Year awards. No other Canadian solution provider has come close to that record.

Number 25

Year of the Data Centre

By: CDN Staff

CDN’s Newsmaker issue for 2016 was an easy one: Data Centres. There were so many data centre openings in 2016 highlighted by the two from Microsoft Canada and the first AWS region outside of the U.S. in Montreal. What these data centres did was put to bed the issue of data sovereignty in this country for channel partners.

Data centres in Canada are growing rapidly. At present there is more than 5,000 data centres of which 200 are brand new, high-end commercial-grade facilities. An additional million square feet of data centre and co-location space is in the planning stages, according to JLL, a Chicago-based professional services and investment management firm specializing in data centres.

Number 24

Michael Murphy, President of Citrix Canada

By: CDN Staff

Multiple CDN Newsmaker Michael Murphy opened a brand new office for Citrix in Canada. He also helped to make the Canadian operation more of a cloud player than ever before.

In 2016, Citrix deepened its partnership with Microsoft to integrate even more solutions with Azure. This move solidified Citrix as an all-in cloud player to the channel. It also took Citrix’ partnership with Microsoft to the next level with the integration between Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) and Intune with XenMobile and NetScaler, NetScaler with Azure Active Directory, and finally enabling XenDesktop-powered VDI to deliver Windows 10 desktop-as-a-service from Azure cloud.

Number 23

Mary Peterson, senior vice president at Samsung Canada

By: CDN Staff

Mary Peterson, the vice president of enterprise and IT Solutions for Samsung Canada pulled up the device maker by the lapels and shook it and got it going into the business-to-business and enterprise markets in Canada.

The appointment of Peterson, an experience channel executive with well-known vendors such as Microsoft and SAP, helped Samsung make a significant series of investments in 2016 towards building up its enterprise business. Peterson told CDN that the company named 2016 “the year of the enterprise.”

Number 22

Mitchell Martin, president at Synnex Canada

By: CDN Staff

A culture shift came to the Canadian operation of Synnex thanks to its longtime leader, president Mitchell Martin.

Martin told CDN the services culture initiative is a North American wide strategy centered around ServiceSolv. The new services push will have solutions development managers handle all aspects of a channel partner solution such as implementation, special delivery and deployment services in the field. “We are closing about 1,000 to 1,500 tickets a month through ServiceSolv, and our goal is to expand that dramatically,” Martin said.

Number 21

Zameer Hussain, general manager at Zones Canada

By: CDN Staff

Global IT solution provider Zones Inc. arrived in Canada in 2016. Zameer Hussain was hired to be Zones’ first ever country manager for the Canadian operation.

Hussain was formerly with two CDN Top 5 Solution Providers in Compugen and CDW Canada. At CDW Canada, Hussain was one of Mary Ann Yule’s top direct reports. Before that Hussain worked at two other CDN Top 100 Solution Providers in Xwave and Metafore. He got his start in the channel at Ingram Micro Canada.


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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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