GTDC APJ Summit: Orchestrating the IT ecosystem of the future

In a panel discussion during the GTDC APJ Summit in Singapore, regional leaders from Ingram Micro, TD Synnex, Redington and Westcon-Comstor discussed the impact of AI and how it is optimizing go-to-market strategies and business operations in the region.

Distributors continue to play a key role for tech vendors in the Asia Pacific region. Not only are distributors capable of helping vendors reach out to customers in specific markets in APAC but they also understand what strategies vendors should look into when launching new products into new markets.

At the recent Global Tech Distribution Council (GTDC) APJ Summit in Singapore, Frank Vitagliano, CEO of GTDC led an insightful panel discussion with several senior distribution executives from the region. The panelists, which included V.S. Hariharan from Redington Limited; Luis Lourenco from Ingram Micro; Jaideep Malhotra from TD SYNNEX; and Patrick Aronson from Westcon-Comstor discussed the impact of AI and how it is shaping go-to-market strategies and business operations in the region.

Here's what the panelists had to say.

TD Synnex

First up, Jaideep Malhotra, President for APJ at TD Synnex highlighted that the Asian region is growing a lot faster compared to other because of the emerging middle class and younger population as well as a faster pace of technology diffusion. Pointing out the diversity of the Asian market, Malhotra believes the region is its own resilient portfolio, whereby if one economy is not doing well, the other will do well.

“Three out of the top five economies in the world are in this region. They are China, India and Japan. That's very powerful. And we have about three billion people driving consumption and economic activity. So, I think there's a lot of factors in APJ that are securing this long-term trend of growth. So, what do I see for 2026 is that I'll just point out to an IMF stat whereby 60% of the world's growth in 2026 is going to come out of a project, and that's very powerful. We’re in the right region and we have announced the right technology producers, and I think it’s good for us,” said Malhotra.

Commenting on the role of TD Synnex as a distributor for any technology, while they are end to end, Malhotra mentioned that they are a marketplace in themselves and also pay attention to specialization.

“So, with every technology, we need to think about specialization within that broad framework. For Cloud and hyperscaler vendors, think of R.I.S.E. R is for reach. I is for intelligence and insights. S is for scalability, support and solutions, and E is all about ecosystem orchestration which is important for cloud marketplaces,” explained Malhotra.

“But how that is possible if distributors do not invest in their own platforms, right? So the key here is that the distributors who are investing in their own platforms will drive better outcomes for cloud members, and that's what we are trying to do at TD Synnex. Our StreamOne platform, for example, is our own IP. We are investing in it. We just recently enhanced the platform with fin ops, sec ops, white label store fronts, market syndication and more,” he added.

At the same time, Malhotra believes there’s more to distribution than just providing cloud operational and skills

“There is the reach. Distributors have a reach which is a combination of various go-to markets, which cannot be achieved on their own, if you are just a single technology provider. So, orchestration becomes important, like being able to provide 24x7 support, and premium level services. Simple things like marketing programs make a difference. I mean one of the cloud vendors (that TD Synnex works with) has a 137 pages marketing incentive program. So, we have a consulting practice just to make our partners understand how to leverage those programs so that they can deliver value to the customers,” said Malhotra.

For Malhotra, these insights and information really give partners the ability to predict future workloads on that cloud.

“I think if you put all these things together and layer on top that, the distributor’s role in a specialist practice is to really skill our partners, certify our partners, and enable them to sell advanced solutions around cloud, data, AI and modernization. The key thing is specialization and platform,” he said.

Westcon-Comstor

For Patrick Aronson, Chief Marketing Officer and Head of APAC at Westcon Comstor, the growth in many of the Asian markets is pretty much an export-based business, which he frankly feels is exporting services, or as a services hub for a lot of the businesses in the region that are export based.

‘We were definitely projecting a much bigger impact on our business. When Liberation Day happened, we were definitely a bit nervous. And distribution is naturally paranoid, right? We live in constant paranoia. There's always a sense of that. And so, we always are looking at the worst possible outcome. But none of that really materialized,” said Aronson.

While the tariff concerns are still present, Aronson believes that the market is heading towards normalization and potentially broader acceptance next year, with the sort of dips like any kind of supply chain disruption.

“It takes a while for it to straighten out. We’ll begin to see that maybe towards the second half of next year. The reality, though, is in our industry where it's key to not just being in the right markets but also being in the right business. We're just at the beginning in many of our regions for this transformation that's happening, whether it's in the networks, whether it's in the applications, whether it's in our people who are changing, it's just the early days. And I'm not just talking about AI for many businesses as digital transformation is still early for some,” explained Aronson.

“If you look at the broad segmentation of many of our markets, much of it is still SMB commercial, and they're just now going down that path of adopting digital tools. So that just means that it will be 2x or 3x the number on the growth. So, I think we're just quite bullish on it,” added Aronson.

Aronson also pointed out that it will be interesting to see what China’s offerings are going to be like. While industries in Asia are primarily filled with American technology companies, from the vendor perspective, he is curious about what are the role of Chinese technologies companies going to be.

“China is taking a friendly approach now to sort of recollect itself and rethink how it wants to go. And we're seeing a lot more Chinese companies, tech companies, expanding outside of China. And of course, this is the region they're going to come into first as it is their natural first stop. What is the impact that that's going to have? How is that going to drive digital adoption? A lot of things to consider, which I think will be interesting, and then seeing how American tech firms respond to that. And I think that's going to play out right here in this region, first and foremost, over the next several years, which would be really interesting,” said Aronson.

Redington Limited

V.S. Hariharan, Managing Director and Group CEO at Redington Limited shared that the Indian distributor has evolved its distribution landscape. While they used to take a product and distribute it to an omni channel of resellers and to a lot of customers, cloud and AI has evolved the practice to become many to many on one side with so many software and services products.

“It's going from being transactional to life cycle and managing the full life cycle. The two radical changes that we are in the middle of, and this is the non-physical part of business globally. The global distribution industry has become 24% and just used to be 12% two years back for us. As we’re entering Southeast Asia, that’s clearly the biggest area of growth,” said Hariharan.

Hariharan also explained that while there is a lot of talk about AI, the software part of Redington’s business is expanding. Specifically, the company grew 48% last year and is a multibillion-dollar business which includes cloud and hyperscaler business that includes security, SaaS, and agency services as well as AI.

“So, it's a very broad transformation and there are a few things that we need to be prepared for this transformation. First, how do we know what capabilities do we build? What enablers do we put in place? Everything from a digital platform, lifecycle management, agency, AI, is clearly one area of focus that we'll be planning and accelerating. The second point is that the markets have actually remained very strong. So, India, for example, there are few things happening. One is there is a lot of investment from both government and corporate, whether it's data center or on prem servers. That's a big area of growth, and we need to somehow participate in the data centers,” he explained.

“We're looking at how to participate in the data center. We are not directly involved in the data centers put up by the hyperscalers. But in the non hyperscaler business, we definitely play the act of switching solutions together. So, we are looking at how to play and invest in that. A third area that’s very interesting for us is our markets. The mobility segment we have is growing much faster than the average in the world. The premiumization that's happening in markets like India. And last year, our smartphone business grew 18% and so clearly, we are focused on creating go-to market channels for reaching the premium customer,” added Hariharan.

“And finally, we're seeing elements of the AI PC adoption, not necessarily the use for AI particularly, but that higher NPC. So, this quarter, for example, in India, we saw 22% of our commercial PCs sold was AI PCs. So, there's a lot happening and it's clear that we need to invest in all of these different trends. We're also very watchful of the scarcity and shortage that's about to come, and we need to factor that in. Clearly, that's something that's a headwind,” explained Hariharan.

“We are also looking to see what's going to be announced at CES because we know there are a lot of new, interesting announcements expected in January. There are so many things we need to factor in it. But clearly the non-physical part of the business, both on SaaS and AI, will be a major part of the company strategy,” said Hariharan.

Ingram Micro

Luis Lourenco, SVP and Chief Executive ASEAN & Hong Kong at Ingram Micro stated that distributors have actually developed good technology whenever an emerging technology comes around. Highlighting how distributors developed good technology with the rise of the cloud a decade ago, he believes that everything starts with value added services, which are mainly around assessments, migration some consulting services.

Along that cloud journey, some companies picked up the need for cybersecurity, and all the distributors had to develop technology around that too, be it the edge, application security environments and even security at the data center as well as on the network.

While Lourenco foresees these areas to grow, the challenge for distributors now is how to do more with cloud and security.

“What are the new incubators, the new technology vendor coming on this AI curve? AI is both a great opportunity and a challenge as well. An IDC study states that the global economy will get $19.7 trillion that will generate nets because of AI. At Ingram Micro, we have been developing over the last three to four years technology offers that match the customer’s needs. For example, large enterprises have the needs of sovereignty, high competition needs and low latency.”

“So, what we are building net new now is how you integrate the platform with the technology from an infrastructure standpoint, because this is not about selling the server. This is not selling the storage. This is not selling the network. All of this is interconnected. So, we are bringing more services connected with our partner ecosystem, hyperscalers, that are bringing AI as a service that can go from a large enterprise organization to a small language model from an SMB standpoint,” he explained.

Lourenco also pointed out that AI is becoming more commoditized at the end user level. And this means distributors need to shift from offering technology to offering what AI is going to do for the outcomes of customers.

“We have moved from speaking about the technology silo to the AI outcome. So, it's a journey. It's been an interesting journey. I think that after so many years, we are seeing something that is very exciting for all of us here so, and I think that all of us are really on this,” he concluded.