After four and a half years at the helm of Dell Canada, now Dell EMC Canada, Kevin Peesker will be stepping down from his position at the end of July.
EMC veteran and Chicago resident, Kevin Connolly has been named as his replacement. Connolly most recently has spent the last six months as the senior vice president of Dell EMC North America Acquisition Sales. Prior to that, he served as district manager of EMC’s Enterprise Division in Chicago before becoming the area manager of mid-market, and vice president of mid-market at EMC.
Kevin Connolly, Dell EMC Canada Commercial president
While Connolly is still fresh off the boat in Canada, he spoke with CDN this afternoon briefly following his appointment.
“I’m only hours in, but I think we are on the same journey,” Connolly said. “The journey is that we need to understand this merger, we need to understand what Michael [Dell] means when he talks about wanting to be a single provider from the edge to the core and to the cloud. We faced similar challenges in the U.S. that we do up here.”
Regarding the channel, Connolly has about a decade of experience in the channel with mid-market EMC, which was 99 per cent channel. “I spent an enormous amount of time with partners in the channel driving business through the channel,” Connolly said.
“I understand that [the channel] is pretty healthy here, I haven’t dug into the details yet. An old boss told me – and this is pretty simple advice – that you want more friends than enemies. My idea will be to quickly embrace and grow the channel for sure. I candidly don’t know the mix yet, but it’s certainly a top priority to find out how much, who is doing well, where we can grow. I think the channel plan itself, in respect to the global Dell EMC channel plan, has been well received. That’s been my experience so far,” said Connolly.
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Connolly’s official title is president of Dell EMC Canada Commercial. He will be based out of Dell EMC Canada’s headquarters in Toronto.
Peesker became Dell Canada’s first ever President in 2013 after a four-year stint working for Dell in Ireland and other European markets. Peesker came into prominence by spearheading Dell Canada’s move to the channel nine years ago after the Canadian GM Greg Davis left the Canadian operation to become worldwide channel chief.
He famously wore angel wings and a halo at the 2008 CDN Top 100 Solution Providers Gala to signal Dell’s commitment to the channel community in Canada.
Peesker served as Dell Canada’s vice president and general manager of SMB at the time. In that position, he was responsible for all aspects of Dell’s direct and channel sales and marketing activities. Peesker is also a member of Dell Canada and the Americas International leadership team, which included ownership of Dell’s corporate commercial customers as well as Dell’s software and peripherals business unit.
After the $68 billion mega deal became official, Peesker shared power with Mike Sharun who is the president of the Dell EMC Enterprise Group. Peesker described the leadership split like “peanut butter and jelly.”
In regards to working side-by-side with Sharun, Connolly stated that he doesn’t anticipate anything changing, citing similar experiences in the U.S. with his enterprise counterpart there.
Together Dell and EMC are a $76 billion organization that serves approximately 90 per cent of the global Fortune 500 along with millions of SMB customers, and all the G20 governments. It will now sport 140,000 employees and holds 20,000 patents.
With notes from Paolo Del Nibletto.