Philippe Jarre believes businesses will increasingly turn to digital technologies to streamline operations, gain competitive advantage and IT distributors will need to offer a wide range of digital solutions.
Describe your current job role and business model?
As the CEO of Mindware, Philippe oversees the operations and strategic direction in the Middle-East and Africa region. Mindware’s business model centers around acting as an intermediary between technology vendors and resellers, providing crucial logistical, technical, and financial support to ensure efficient product delivery to the appropriate markets.
Recognizing the rapid evolution in the IT distribution landscape due to digital transformation, the company is shifting its focus to offer a diverse range of digital solutions to its customers. Emphasizing areas like cloud computing, security, IoT, and data analytics, Mindware is actively investing in these technologies to remain at the forefront of the market and support its partners in navigating the dynamic technology landscape.
Philippe’s vision is to maintain Mindware’s position as market leaders by continuously upskilling the team and investing in cutting-edge technologies. By doing so, the company aims to provide comprehensive support to its partners, enabling them to thrive in an ever-changing digital-first world. Mindware’s evolving business model is committed to delivering exceptional service and value to its customers and partners alike.
Which technologies can make a difference to customers?
Mindware’s emphasis is shifting towards supporting the technologies that underpin digital transformation: cloud computing, security, IOT and data analytics.
AI and ML are already major topics in the technology industry, but their importance is likely to continue growing in 2023. As the number of connected devices continues to grow, the potential applications of IoT technology are expanding rapidly.
5G connectivity being deployed across most countries in the region will enable new applications and use cases in areas such as autonomous vehicles, smart cities, and augmented reality. With the increase in cyber threats and data breaches, this area is still on the top of the agenda of all companies.
Quantum computing has the potential to revolutionise computing by enabling much faster and more efficient processing of large amounts of data. While still in its early stages of development, there has been significant progress in quantum computing research in recent years.
How can a channel partner disrupt the regional market?
Digital transformation is accelerating and at the same time the cost of money is increasing dramatically. As a result, there is huge momentum in the market to offer Solutions-as-a-Service: moving from traditional Software-as-a-Service or Infrastructure-as-a-Service to providing Solutions-as-a-Service. This requires integration and financial capabilities from Mindware partners.
They need to integrate public, hybrid and on-premises infrastructure, with specific services solutions and offer all of this in a packaged solution with flexible payment terms over multiple years.
Jarre can also see Chat GPT resonating well in the region and that everybody is starting small or mega projects to have their own solutions, leveraging their data, and as a result building strategic, business transformation projects.
Which aspects of your job role are rewarding, which challenging?
Throughout his career, Jarre has had the opportunity to hold various management roles in both global, multinational corporations as well as medium-sized companies. Jarre has always applied the same rule: hire the right people, ensure they are working well together with a strong spirit of team-work and having fun in their job, get into details all the time and be paranoid about it, and bring this approach to the team without being a micro-manager. Not easy; but this is all about balance.
Here are Jarre’s management tips for top channel executives.
- Empowering cross-functional teams to work together to achieve shared goals.
- Data-driven decision making which involves using data and analytics to inform business decisions.
- Creating a culture that values differences, promotes equality, and fosters inclusion.
- Creating a supportive work environment that promotes work-life balance, and personal growth.
- Recognising performance and celebrating success.
How do you like to de-stress off work? Jarre likes sports. Jarre was born in Grenoble in the middle of the Alps in France and did ten years of skying competition from the age of eight to 18. He likes outside activities where he can have fun and compete against himself. Living in Dubai, Jarre does wakeboarding, roller blading and tennis, most of the time with his wife who shares the same passions and Jarre loves this.
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