Channel Veteran Gilroy Joins SAP

Gilroy most recently had been doing consulting work for Intermec and previously was president of Arrow Electronics' Enterprise Computing Solutions arm, a post he held until April 2008.

He also once served as CEO of OnForce, the online services marketplace. Gilroy, however, is perhaps best known to VARs for his 24-year career at HP, where he served as the company's channel chief before leading global SMB operations until 2005.

An SAP spokesperson said Gilroy started this week and will be working on teams with Tom Cooper, senior vice president of SAP's Small and Midsize Enterprise organization, and Pat Hume, senior vice president of SME indirect channels and communications.

Gilroy's long career at HP ended in 2005, a casualty of then newly named CEO Mark Hurd's companywide reorganization to simplify HP's structure.

Since that time, Gilroy has hopped around the industry. He joined ComputerRepair.com in November 2005 as a strategic consultant. Two months later he was named senior vice president of sales and service at OnForce. He was promoted to OnForce's president in April 2006 and named CEO two months later.

By the end of 2006, however, Gilroy had moved on to Arrow. While leading the distributor's ECS group, Gilroy was named one of CRN's Top 25 Most Innovative Executives late in 2007, but he was gone in April 2008 and had remained out of the spotlight since then, mostly working as a consultant.

SAP made a wise choice in tapping Gilroy to enhance its channel team, said Bruce Geier, CEO of Technology Integration Group, a San Diego-based solution provider. "I have lot of respect for Kevin. He understands the channel as much as anybody, and the whole market. It's a company that needs to develop some of that presence and interface more with the channel. Not that they don't do it now, but they could use some more of that," Geier said.

Rick Whiting contributed to this article.