For Tech Data, it’s all about driving innovation with partners and vendors

While AI is still a priority in both Singapore and Malaysia, Mark Tan, Vice President and Country General Manager for Tech Data Singapore and Tec D Malaysia, believes the latter is still one step behind the former when it comes to adoption of the technology.

At the recent Tech Data Momentum 2025 summit in Singapore, Mark Tan, Vice President and Country General Manager for Tech Data Singapore and Tec D Malaysia, highlighted that the distributor continues to see its revenue grow in the region.

In fact, Tan said that the APAC region has exceeded its revenue by quite a bit in the first half of the year. For the second half of the year, Tan is confident of continued growth as well, just as experienced in the other regions they operate in.

Speaking exclusively to CRN Asia at the summit, Tan mentioned that AI is showing the biggest interest not only in Singapore and Malaysia but across the region. To ensure successful development and deployment of AI use cases, Tan said that Tech Data offers support and the foundation for partners in the region. This includes bringing in partners, vendors, and ISVs to sit in their Destination AI framework.

“With our partners bringing in opportunities, including the problem statement that customer want to solve through AI, we're able to train and help to innovate suitable solutions for them. Also, it is extremely difficult for one partner to be self-sufficient. Other than the resources which are very expensive and hard to find, they need the infrastructure, they need the partnership with ISVs and that's where we can come in to aggregate, help them to qualify and innovate a solution,” said Tan.

“Partners need to pick where they want to invest. It is too tall a task to put in everything, unless they are a big giant like ST or NCS, who can do that. But the rest of the partners, I think it is probably easier to be successful to come into our framework called Destination AI, work with a distributor like us to produce the solution that a customer needs,” explained Tan.

As a support framework, Tan explained that Destination AI enables partners to link up together and get the support needed to have the solution needed for a particular AI’s problem statement.

This is particularly of great value to mid-tier partners who often struggle to solve a customer’s problem. Tan pointed out that while these smaller partners get demand from customers, they are only proficient in a small part of the ecosystem, which can be in the cloud, infrastructure or even networking.

“I think that's their struggle. That's where we are here to help. So, the vendors also sit in the Destination AI framework. What we do is when opportunities come, we will qualify those opportunities and decide what technologies should be adopted for this proposal. And then those vendors will come in and work with us,” said Tan.

Tan added that as long as Tech Data can demonstrate to partners the framework that they can support them with, and as long as the articulation of the solution that the customer needs can be established, they will be able to provide the solutions to partners.

Growth in Malaysia and Singapore

For Tan there is a big difference between the adoption of technology between the two markets overseas. While AI is still a priority in both Singapore and Malaysia, he believes the latter is still one step behind the former when it comes to adoption of the technology.

Tan said the reason for this is mainly because the Malaysian market is still driven mostly by the demand for IT infrastructure.

“The top-selling revenue [in Malaysia] are coming from devices at this point of time. But there are a few shining stars in the market who are very proficient and advanced in AI solutions,” said Tan.

According to Tan, reasons for this include the lack of talent as well as the supply and demand for AI in Malaysia. In Singapore, not only is the density of the talent is a lot higher than Malaysia., the end users’ adoption of AI and the understanding of the technology as well as the pace of change they are willing to go is higher.

However, Tan also explained that Tech Data continues to bring a lot of ideas, and the skill sets that local partners should adopt in order to be proficient in AI.

“We have a lot of those conversations. I think then the most important thing is where the demand is. The demand is not exactly very strong. Don't get me wrong, it is there. It's not strong. And the partners are making money from other stuff, like devices especially. We don't see the legacy partners transforming. We don't see new partners popping up. In fact, we see more partners dealing with small language model than in Singapore. Singapore is very much the LLM world. So, I think probably Malaysia will start from that perspective,” explained Tan.

While Tan acknowledged that Singapore is seeing faster adoption of AI, he also pointed out that the challenge now is meeting the demand and expectations which can be not practical at times.

“The perception or imagination of what AI can do and the way it changes is very fast. And this is a challenge in the market and for partners. How do they identify an immediate opportunity that is practical? How do they convert those practical opportunities into sales? That is something that is in a vicious cycle,” said Tan.

Naturally, the demand for AI promises new business opportunities for vendors. For Tan, AI is the biggest revenue stream in the channel since the cloud era. However, he also feels vendors need to understand the AI ecosystem in Singapore and Malaysia.

Tan explained that most vendors often operate within their own optic vision. He feels they need to understand how they can fit into the ecosystem. Yet, some vendors feel it is very sensitive for them to work within the ecosystem because they are afraid that their opportunities are exposed.

“That's where our opportunities as executors are. I think that we still have to do some work in that area. The partners very well understand that being in the ecosystem is very important. But I think the vendors themselves, they're still within their own vertical. It's hard to make them talk together. And that's our job,” said Tan.

Looking towards the future, Tan wants to see Destination AI to be more mature in terms of how the customers and the vendors can engage Tech Data in a framework that is very efficient, very easy for partners to plug into.

“The outcome is that we can help them to provide an AI proposal, AI solution very efficiently, very quickly. For Tech Data Singapore, we are definitely able to establish that maturity in Destination AI, that every vendor, every partner knows how to engage us to help them to solve their AI problem,” concluded Tan.