By Charles Fowler
I started off my IT career
in 1990 driving a delivery van for a local IT integrator startup. As a recent
college graduate paying $75 a month in rent, $8.00 an hour sounded like great
pay at the time. A career in IT was never in my plans. My major was Mass
Communications which had little to do with IT at the time. Furthermore, I
despised my computer programming class in college. A flashing DOS
prompt was far from exciting. Like so many others in this business, my
college major had nothing to do with IT. Looking back, choosing IT as a career
was an excellent choice. I say it was an excellent choice because the timing
was right for the industry. The money was flowing like water with the advent of
the PC, Intel servers, networks, Windows OS, messaging, and the need for
quality technical resources. We had them all and were growing at lightning
speed. Fast forward fifteen years, I am now looking for a job change. My
company had chosen a new business direction that seemed counterproductive to
the changes I was seeing on the horizon. They were operating in the “now”
versus evolving for the future. It turns out this was an excellent time to look
at other job options. A few years later the company was acquired and has been
in a downturn ever since. The company did not look forward far enough to see
what industry changes were coming, or simply chose to ignore the obvious for
fear of change.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
would become my new employer for the next 11 years. After working on the front
line as a reseller, it was a breath of fresh air to be competing with a handful
of other manufacturers, compared to the hundreds of other resellers we competed
with every day at my prior job. Hewlett Packard was, and still is, a venerable
IT manufacturer. Those jobs did not come along every day, and were both desired
and respected careers. I saw a lot of changes during my 11 years at HPE. What
once had been a small handful of manufacturers (i.e. HP, IBM, Dell, EMC, Cisco,
Netapp) battling it out for customer share, had now become a very crowded
space, with upstarts popping up every day. It was beginning to feel a bit like
I was back on the frontlines of my previous career. In addition to the large
upswing in competition, we were also transitioning the bulk of responsibility
to the channel resellers to reduce internal costs. This is not a strategy
practiced by only HP Enterprise, but all the manufacturers. Even Dell finally
had to give in to the indirect model of selling to remain competitive. It was
clear to me that this was going to be the go forward strategy and could impact
my income, and possibly my employment in the future. I am not one to hold out
to the very end, and recognize that change is both inevitable and necessary, so
on to my next chapter.
Today I am writing this
blog as the Director of Enterprise Sales for Richmond VA based Convergent
Technologies Group (CTG). CTG was my go-to partner while employed with HP
Enterprise. I chose to work for CTG because they have a culture that appeals to
me. They are always open to new ideas and understand looking ahead is
imperative for them and their customers. Training is a part of every
transaction, not as a billable item, but just part of doing business with our
company. We believe empowering our customers is the key to our collective
success. What’s next for me? I am hoping palm trees, beaches, and endless
cocktails. Cheers!
Convergent Technologies
Group (CTG) is a Value-Added Reseller and Integrator headquartered in Richmond
VA. CTG is the only HP Enterprise Exclusive Platinum Partner headquartered in
the Commonwealth of Virginia. Charles Fowler is the Director of Enterprise Sales.
For more information on our company and upcoming events, please visit our
website at www.ctgva.com
