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Swallow flies into Logicalis UK exec nest

Third boss in 14 months; can he stand the summer heat in Slough?

Logicalis has sworn in acting UK boss Bob Swallow as the permanent MD, vowing to fill the other seats in the senior management team next month.

Swallow moved to the Slough-based system integrator last summer, first as a contractor to restructure sales for the Cisco team and then as sales director from November.

The man has taken to the hot seat after a period of uncertainty for the UK wing of the pan-regional Group, with results dipping off the loss of its largest contracts (Wales PSN) and a wider slowdown in demand for key vendor IBM.

Swallow told us much of the heavy lifting restructuring work was completed by outgoing European president Arnaud Spirlet (he is leaving to run Cisco Benelux). "I don't see us as being in transition anymore, we are in execution [mode]."

Under Spirlet, Logicalis cut ties with all vendors except Big Blue, Cisco, Network Appliance and VMware. And the operation was built around four biz units: data center; networking/comms/security; analytic insights; and IT services (managed, professional and cloud). The services unit was also split across vendors rather than industries.

Swallow added: "There are some things we need to transform, so we've still got some work to do in services, and I think we've still got some people skills either to train or change,” he told The Register in a brief interview.

Swallow is the third UK boss at Logicalis since last February when Mark Starkey upped sticks, and Ben Gale lasted just six weeks last autumn.

Other vital roles lying empty include sales director (replacement for Swallow) and services director – but Swallow confirmed the interviews are over and the newbies who were selected will start in the next three weeks.

Swallow has a background in tech stretching back some decades, including senior roles at Siemens Communications and Network Systems, Dimension Data, Datapoint and Chess Telecom. ®

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