John Walters (Nextgen) during the ARN 2018 Hall of Fame lunch
IT industry veteran Gavin Lawless has returned to the distribution fold, taking up the role of director of growth with Nextgen Distribution.
Officially starting on 21 September, Lawless will be based in Sydney and is responsible for helping to drive the next phase of growth for Nextgen, which has been growing at more than 50 per cent CAGR, since its inception, seven years ago.
Specifically, his national role will stretch across all of Nextgen’s group of companies including Bang, Optima, Connect and Orbus Capital.
Lawless’ responsibilities will also encompass growth across key partners, current and future vendors as well as acquisitions that will add to Nextgen’s strategic vision.
Nextgen group CEO John Walters said the distributor continued its strong overall revenue growth last year, increasing cloud and annuity revenues more than 85 per cent.
In addition, the business completed its first acquisition of digital marketing services provider, Bang, and launched financing and payment solutions provider for the channel, Orbus Capital.
"It was a big year but we’ve decided to double down this year and Gavin’s appointment clearly demonstrates that,” Walters said. "At Nextgen we are reinventing distribution through innovation and execution, which is all underpinned by aggressive growth.
"We enjoy and feel extremely privileged to participate in the growth of our partners, our vendors, our services and our people.
"To ensure this remains a key part of our future success, we have decided to establish a dedicated role and Gavin’s experience, drive and leadership style is a perfect fit."
Meahwhile, Lawless said he had his eye on Nextgen, and the success and growth they have created from being innovative and focused in the enterprise market, had been impressive.
"We know that maintaining rapid growth gets more difficult as organisations become larger and more mature, so having a role exclusively focused on maintaining this growth with a strong team culture built on integrity, trust and relationships is a rare and exciting opportunity,” Lawless said.
Lawless began his career in distribution with Express Data in 2001, and joined Avnet in 2005 as a sales director, eventually taking charge as general manager and vice president in 2006, up until October 2011, following the integration of the acquisition of fellow distributor, itX at the time.
Lawless was most recently the director of sales for Oracle NetSuite. Prior to that he was the director of sales, direct and channel business at Infor. He was also the national channel manager for CA Technologies in 2005.
