Charles Fowler's Position Update

By Charles Fowler

As someone who has been in the IT industry for 28 years, I have found the only consistent thing is change. While we may be at the top of our game one year, we may find ourselves near the bottom the next due to changes in the industry. This industry innovates at an exhausting rate. One must not only be in tune with what is coming next, but what is coming multiple iterations down the line. If you are only looking at the next best thing, you may already be two or more steps behind the technology curve. The same can be said about careers. While timing is not everything, it is a big part of the equation when choosing to change careers or companies.

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

Charles Fowler is the Director of Enterprise Sales at Convergent Technologies Group.