After many years as a leader in the Canadian channel and in the distribution space, Peter Diniz is moving on to new challenges.
Diniz was the long-time vice-president and general manager of distributor Bell Micro, which was acquired by Avnet Technology Solutions (NYSE: AVT) last year in a transaction worth US$631 million. Diniz stayed on with Avnet after the acquisition, and last August he took on a global role with the company as director, supplier business.
However, in an e-mail to CDN Diniz confirmed that he has moved on and is no longer with the distributor.
“Avnet is an excellent company, and continues to set the standard in value-add distribution. Unfortunately for me, the job was simply not an ideal fit against my past experience and future expectations,” said Diniz. “My separation was handled professionally and amicably. No regrets.”
As for what the future may hold for the channel veteran, Diniz said he’s not sure what’s next for him and he didn’t leave the company with a specific destination in mind.Diniz was CDN‘s #10 newsmaker of 2010, thanks largely to Avnet’s acquisition of Bell Micro.
In his decade-long stewardship at Bell Micro, he spearheaded the move to make the high-end storage distributor nationwide by opening offices across the country; Diniz was also one of the first to bring Linux-based servers to Canadian resellers; he also helped to craft a channel program targeted at the hot trend of Storage Area Networking, which was unheard of at the time for a distributor.
His biggest career move was acquiring Forefront Graphics, in a Canadian acquisition deal that would dramatically expand Bell Micro’s data storage offerings. During his time he arranged an exclusive deal with predominately direct Apple to be the Canadian distributor for Xserve RAID and Xsan storage products.
When boutique distributors were having their way in the security market, Diniz brought in a security division to compete with those smaller distributors. He was also a big proponent of solid state drives as a great alternative in the market place for resellers.
Follow Jeff Jedras on Twitter: @JeffJedrasCDN.
