Avnet interim CEO gets nod for full-time fun and frolicks

Enterprise tech distie Avnet has confirmed former Lenovo big knob Bill Amelio as its permanent chief exec - like it was ever in any doubt.

Amelia rocked up in July and fronted the Q4 conference call with analysts to go over why group turnover was still shrinking and then outlined his get rich quick… well a plan.

Cue the marketing bluster from Avnet chairman William Schumann, who said headhunters had scoured the industry to fill the CEO position and “concluded Bill is the best candidate”.

“He brings energy and focus to the business, and the board unanimously agreed that making him the permanent CEO was in the best interest of our customers, employees and shareholders.”

Amelio has had no direct experience of running a distributor though he managed IBM’s PC division, headed up Lenovo when it acquired the business unit from Big Blue and for the past five years he headed up oil-field services outfit CHC Group.

The strategy Amelio created centres first on getting the “execution” right to make more of Avnet’s scale - it runs 25 separate P&Ls globally - and to concentrate more on more profitable stuff. Sounds easier than it is.

The company has already established a global team of 450 specialists to push cloud, cognitive computing, data analytics, IoT, mobility, security and enterprise networking.

Avnet's classic data centre kit space has shrunk in recent times and likely won’t recover to what it was - AWS et al have seen to that.

Distributors like Avnet, the so-called value added distributors of this world, are supposed to help vendors make markets. Once a sector has matured they are supposed to have already identified the next hot topic and built plans around it. With this in mind, AI will no doubt be featuring more highly in Avnet’s portfolio in the not-too-distant future. ®