CDN: What does your current position involve?
Mawji: I’m the Senior Director, North America Commercial, which basically means I’m responsible for end-user Enterprise, Commercial, HPC, Education, Government, and Hyperscale Business for North America specifically targeting the Datacenter space.
CDN: Looking back on your career, what led you to where you are right now?
Mawji: I haven’t gone in a straight line, that’s for sure. But I have had many opportunities throughout my career, and they were pretty much always tied to the channel in some way.
CDN: What’s the biggest cloud trend out there right now?
Mawji: I’m right now seeing a push for HPC in the cloud that is spanning multiple verticals like finance, oil and gas, and enterprise. The need to support higher-performing verticals is big right now. Another trend is toward pushing non-traditional workloads for greater scale in the cloud.
CDN: What advice would you give young up-and-comers in the channel?
Mawji: I guess the best advice I could give would be for them to be open and receptive to change. Don’t limit yourself or close yourself off. Ask a ton of questions, and try to always be looking for new technologies or trends within your customer base that could lead to disruption.
CDN: What can/should be done to ensure the Canadian (and NA) channel ecosystems continue to thrive?
Mawji: I think there should be a continued focus on value-add. The channel must always be about new innovation, and we have to make sure SMEs get on board to lead that charge forward into the future.