David Knight

Softcat is a leading provider of software licensing, hardware, security and related IT services to the corporate and public sector. We have recently floated on the London Stock Exchange (FTSE 250) and currently employ around 1500 people. The company has an annual turnover exceeding £1Bn and has been profitable since inception, resulting in a strong balance sheet and very firm financial foundations. Softcat sells and supports products and solutions from all the world's leading IT companies. For all our portfolio products and solutions we offer a full range of services including advice and guidance, technical design, product sourcing, implementation, support, managed services and project management. My time at Softcat has seen me grow with the company, starting with the sales department for the first two years, when in addition to hitting sales targets I was helping other sales executives quote hardware, when the company was mainly a software provider. In 2003 I started the pre-sales team helping Softcat to diversify into a wider range of offerings, I grew this team until such a time where it could sustain itself and then went on to become the first field based Softcat Technical Consultant. I have concentrated on the Storage and Virtualisation field, including the entire HP storage and servers portfolio (Focusing on 3PAR, Blades and Virtual Connect), VMware, Netapp and more recently Pure Storage, Veeam and Cisco UCS/DC products. I was promoted to Senior Consultant as the team grew and the Lead Consultant on several large projects. For the past 8 years I have lead a team of 12 Technical Consultants as the Technical Practice Lead for Datacentre, whilst remaining as an active Consultant delivering key projects for customers.