New Leader For A New Era

Whenever there is a change in the corner office, there's a general belief that things will change at the company too. C.R. Howdyshell (pictured), the new president at Rolta AdvizeX, has taken over the solution provider giant – No. 98 on CRN's Solution Provider 500 – at a moment of industry change, with businesses shifting more of their infrastructure to the cloud and calling on solution providers for their services expertise.

Howdyshell, who has been with the company for 14 years, most recently as head of its Midwest region, took over as president in February as his predecessor, Fred Traversi, shifted into retirement in June. One of Howdyshell's goals is to balance his company's profit mix so that half will come from services. Since Rolta AdvizeX, which was founded in the mid-1970s, has been rooted in data center technologies, Howdyshell estimates that only about 30 percent of the company's profit today comes from the services side. The company holds high-level partnerships with several top technology vendors, notably Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, Dell EMC and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

Click through to read what Howdyshell had to say in an interview with ITBestOfBreed.