Data centers, cloud applications, security and collaboration may not have always been the business drivers for historically SMB-focused D&H Canada. Still, they are among the hot spots that drove growth for the distributor in its recently completed fiscal 2024.

Michelle Biase, general manager of D&H Canada, said the company’s modern business practice, which includes those areas and more advanced solutions areas, grew in the double digits for the fiscal year that ended April 30. It’s part of the distributor’s longstanding “built for growth” strategy.

“We’ve been looking to expand our breadth, and we’ve been seeing that growth,” said Biase, who reported double-digit growth with larger resellers over the fiscal year. “I think [larger partners] need a trusted partner offering a full breadth of technology products and services.”

That effort got another boost in June when the distributor introduced veteran CDW Canada and HP Canada executive Dan Reio as the new Modern Solutions business unit director.

“It’s an area where we’re doubling down to support growth,” Biase said.

D&H has been aided by its move last fall into a new and much larger distribution center in the western suburbs of Toronto, which let it bring some of the professional services it previously outsourced in-house thanks to a new configuration center. Biase said configuration services “exceeded our expectations,” though it’s still early. She said the distributor has a standard list of services, including asset tagging and imaging, but has taken a bit of a “hybrid strategy” to find opportunities to help individual partners.

For example, she said that because it’s in a new facility meant to last for years of growth, there’s space available to help customers manage inventory — both vendors and resellers.

As a bonus, the available office space at the new facility has meant that the distributor can have much of its staff onsite for at least part of the time for the first time since pre-pandemic times.

“It’s been exciting to have people back in the office,” Biase said.

The year also saw the launch of D&H’s Partnerfi community in Canada with its first symposium and community. Biase said that the launch is both a function of D&H’s maturity in the market at his point and the way the Canadian distribution market has “morphed and consolidated.” Most notably, the merger of Tech Data and Synnex resulted in two reseller groups becoming one, bringing Tech Select and Varnex together under the CommunitySolv banner.

“People are looking for something different that drives value,” Biase said. 

So far, it’s primarily been defining the original group leadership and members, setting up a cadence that will be familiar to anyone who’s watched pre-merger Synnex’s Varnnex group—one “Canada-only” conference a year and joining the U.S. parent for a larger affair once a year. In this case, it’s Dallas in October for Partnerfi.

The distributor also debuted SuccessPath Premier, an enablement and training program designed for its historical base in smaller solution providers looking to ramp up managed services as part of their business today.

Because it’s 2024 in the technology industry, AI is a major focus for D&H Canada. Biase said the company’s message that it’s going big on AI will feature prominently at its Thread conferences in Toronto and Montreal this fall. 

“In the past, we’ve been known for our focus on the SMB space and the Modern Solutions business, but we want partners to know we’ve got a solid business [around AI], that we’re a destination for that, and we have operational excellence there,” she said.

While that part of the business is building, the conversations are already developing around partner opportunities with Microsoft’s Copilot technology, as well as the opportunity around AI-enabled PCs, which Biase expects to be a significant driver of the current wave of post-pandemic device refresh.

“A lot of partners aren’t quite sure what the specific opportunities are right now, but there’s a lot of conversation about power, networking, compute, storage,” she said. “There’s an AI impact in every part of the technology suite.”

The distributor is also looking to build its SuccessPath partner enablement efforts around AI to help partners understand and realize opportunities around AI.

While it continues its “built for growth” approach, the privately-held company will stay true to its core, Biase said, pledging that even with growth, it will “be agile and flexible,” adapting to partner needs and offering flexibility and credit capacity.

“Let’s learn your business and talk about how we can partner together,” she said. “Despite a challenging market, we want to help our partners accelerate and grow.”