01732 759725 08 INTERVIEW Technology Reseller (TR): You’ve been in the distribution business for 28 years. How do you think it has changed in that time? Joel Chimoindes (JC): I don’t know that it has changed much, because alongside volume distribution there have always been areas of specialism in distribution – I try to avoid ‘value-add’ because it’s one of the most overused terms in the industry. When I started out, I was in a specialist distribution business, Imago, and its particular product expertise at the time was in monitors with speakers on the side, multi-headed graphics cards that we were selling into the finance industry and digital editing cards that cost five thousand pounds a card. Then we got involved in video conferencing via PictureTel which was deemed very specialist at the time. My point is that products mature, but while they’re in the early stage of the adoption curve, there’s a space for specialist distribution to help the channel with knowledge, expertise and support services. Then, as those products become more day-to-day, partners take on that responsibility themselves – they skill up, they educate and they deploy their own services. Once they have matured completely, people move on to new areas. With the exception of video conferencing, those technologies that I referred to as specialisms in 1998 are runof-the-mill in the IT world now. So, I don’t think the mechanisms of distribution have changed; specialism is still at one end of the scale and volume at the other, and that’s always been the case. What has changed is the amount of acquisitions and mergers. Go back 10 years and there were probably around 30 sizeable AV distributors in Europe. Now there’s probably about eight, and those eight continue to acquire smaller distributors. That has been a big change. Has it been a good thing? As companies acquire, they add focused expertise and customers and, in a lot of cases, profit to expand the business. So, on the one hand, I think it’s great because those businesses can offer scale in more areas, but it can reduce choice in some areas as well. Coming back to my original statement, I do think there always will be a place for specialism in distribution. And, for us that means making sure that we are the number one go-to partner in those areas where we can enable our partners to reach revenue quicker. TR: Do you plan to take Nuvias UC into new areas, as other distributors in your areas of the market have done, or are you going to remain focused on existing areas of expertise? JC: When I joined, I was really clear about what our strategy would be moving forward and how we would stay wedded to that. To that end, our strategy is based on four pillars, the first of which is telephony. That is the heritage of the business and we still do a lot of work in the telephony sector, especially around more complex areas, for example with Broadsoft. Second is the video and meeting room space. We all know about the explosion of that market post-COVID, but it’s definitely going through a maturing phase now. Pre-COVID, the addressable market worldwide was about 140 million meeting rooms and that’s now down to 90 million. Microsoft will tell you that only 16% of that addressable space has adequate video, which sounds great as an adoption opportunity, but we’re seeing average sales price (ASP) come down as well, which means the channel has to sell a lot more in that space to achieve revenue growth. Our third area is UCaaS, with companies like Zoom. That market is really important to us and is growing at 12-13% CAGR. The fourth area is CCaaS (contact centre as-a-service). Contact centre Technology Reseller talks to Joel Chimoindes, CEO of Nuvias UC, about his first 10 months in charge of the specialist distributor of voice, UC and CCaaS solutions and his plans for 2024. In March, Nuvias UC, a Rigby Group business appointed Joel Chimoindes as CEO, taking over from Jeremy Keefe who had led the business for the previous two and a half years. Previously Vice President of Maverick AV Solutions Europe, Chimoindes has 28 years’ experience in specialist AV and unified communications distributors, including spells at Imago, under Ian Vickerage; Horizon Technology Group, Tandberg’s first distribution partner anywhere in the world; AVnet, following its acquisition of Horizon; and Tech Data, where Chimoindes had a European role with responsibility for high value areas such as unified communications and cloud, solutions aggregation and professional services. In 2016, Chimoindes left Tech Data Group to set up the service-led distribution business Beta Digital Media Solutions, specialising in content creation services for digital signage resellers, before rejoining the Group in 2017 as European Commercial Director of its specialist AV business unit Maverick AV Solutions, later being promoted to VP of Maverick AV Solutions Europe. The opportunity to take up the CEO role at Nuvias UC came at a good time for Chimoindes – he turned 50 in 2023 and was looking for a fresh challenge within distribution. “I’ve always looked at Nuvias UC and the Nuvias Group as a specialist business and I was attracted to the role because I really wanted to be in an environment where, one, I was testing myself in my first CEO role; and, two, where we could be super-focused and nimble with that. Because I was turning 50, I’d already made a list of things that I wanted next in my career, and Nuvias UC felt like a great organisation to join and help move to the next level.” With Joel Chimoindes, CEO of Nuvias UC Q&A Joel Chimoindes
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