Visiting the Past and Future of Distribution with Industry Legend Steve Raymund

From the early pick-pack-and-ship operations to modern-day cloud and innovation incubators, IT distribution has undergone a major transformation, according to Steve Raymund, retired chair and CEO of the former Tech Data (now TD SYNNEX). The channel pioneer joins host Frank Vitagliano in this special 50th episode of Beyond Distribution to discuss milestones in the IT industry’s evolution, channel dynamics and the origins of the GTDC.   

They discuss the company’s founding by Raymund’s father in 1974 as a data supply retailer with a handful of employees, as well as his personal experiences leading and reshaping the organization from the 1980s through his retirement in 2017. From reselling components and computers before the internet to the introduction of multi-vendor solutions and the cloud, their conversation covers a lot of historical ground.   

Which investments, innovations and trends had the greatest impact on the industry?  How did the needs and abilities of the IT community shift since those early days of distribution? Get those answers and learn how the transformation from hardware-centric to services-driven IT businesses reinvented the channel in this episode of Beyond Distribution with GTDC.    

 Check out the GTDC Knowledge Hub to access previous episodes of the podcast and other valued industry resources.