Tech Data has appointed Joe Quaglia the new president of its Americas business, effectively putting the seven-plus year veteran of the distributor atop its business in the United States, Canada, and Latin America.

Quaglia takes over the role most recently held by Murray Wright, who left the distributor in September to take over as CEO of reseller Zones.com, the second consecutive Tech Data Americas chief to defect to the solution provider side of the channel. In January 2010, Ken Lamneck left the same post to take over as CEO of Insight Enterprises.

Quaglia has had a number of U.S.-focused roles for Tech Data in his time with the distributor, including covering both sales and marketing executive roles.

“As [Tech Data CEO] Bob [Dutkowsky] told me, ‘no training required,’” Quaglia quipped.

But it’s his most recent roles at Tech Data that probably provide the biggest clues for his direction and the direction of the distributor under his watch. Quaglia has played a key role overseeing some of the company’s high-value projects, including the U.S. rollout of its TDcloud and StreamOne platforms, its TDmobility joint venture with Brightstar (from which Tech Data recently bought out its partner), and its advanced infrastructure solutions (AIS) business, one of the distributor’s fastest-growing areas of business, in both the U.S. and Canada.

AIS and StreamOne have both been active in both the U.S. and Canada, but Quaglia suggested that TDcloud and TDmobility are “opportunities where we haven’t scratched the surface yet [in Canada], but they’re very portable.”

“Markets may be different between countries, but the way companies and people consume technology is the same,” Quaglia said. “We have an opportunity to leverage what we’ve done in the U.S. business into the Canadian business more.”

For Quaglia and Tech Data, that means finding an appropriate balance point between bringing systems and processes that have proven successful in the U.S.  market to Canada, and maintaining the culture at Tech Data Canada, which has remained a fairly independent subsidiary with its own leadership and feel.

“[Tech Data Canada president] Rick [Reid] and [senior vice president of sales and marketing] Greg [Myers] have built a culture that really works well in Canada, and it’s a special and unique offering,” Quaglia said. “We don’t want to take anything away from that. If anything, let’s pour on more. We think there’s some opportunities there.”

Quaglia said he’ll be building out a plan with Reid to introduce some more of those currently U.S.-only offerings in Canada, and that when Quaglia and his team interface with Canadian resellers, they’re often asked about offerings like TDmobility and TDcloud.

“I have a number of thoughts and idea swirling around, and it’s all about serving the Canadian market better,” Quaglia said. “We’ll make that out with Rick, and in the next couple of quarters, we’ll start to demonstrate the benefits.”

As well, Quaglia said there are opportunities to drive more value for both solution providers and vendors, and to “go deeper” with both parties. He said there are “constant opportunities” to build Tech Data’s business in the cloud, in the data center, and to add more services to the distributor’s line card.

“Our customer base is transitioning their business into services, and they need enablement help to do that. I can see Tech Data transitioning to do more services enablement,” he said.