Kyle Davies

About Kyle

Kyle leads the Office of the CTO, which plays an integral role in promoting CDW’s opinion and voice in the market, and provides progressive and balanced thought leadership for CDW customers, as well as leading the CDW ITS technology direction. In this role, Kyle also leads our product management function, alongside the Chief Technologists, to understand the market and opportunities to enable the development of market-relevant propositions and service capabilities.  

He is an experienced leader and passionate technologist who can assess, plan, and design across a wide technology stack. His knowledge and experience were built up through his career; spanning roles such as Junior Developer, Service Desk Analyst, Problem Manager, Internal Projects Lead, Consultant, Architect, and leadership roles.

Kyle started his career as a developer but found that the constraints he was working to didn’t suit his inquisitive and problem-solving nature. He then moved to an internal IT role, where he worked his way through the business.

He was then given a chance as a consultant, despite having no professional qualifications; something that most channel partners wanted. Within 12 months he had more than 30 certifications spanning workspace, data centre, and cloud technologies. This enabled him to work on award-winning projects; delivering large-scale change for organisations and opening up new revenue streams.

From here, he worked for varying channel partners until he landed at Kelway (which became CDW UK) in 2015 as a Workspace Solutions Architect, driving enhancements to the way in which organisations get the most out of their people through technology. Kyle's commitment, expertise, and hard work has led to him securing the CDW Outstanding Technical Achievement Award for 2 years in succession. 

Since then, Kyle has applied his problem-solving abilities to varying roles within CDW; assisting in the assessment, design, and technical authority for many of our largest projects and IT outsources. 

Ever since starting his role as a consultant, Kyle has engaged with the wider technical community in his own time, sharing experiences and helping individuals navigate their roles and capabilities. This engagement saw Kyle awarded with invitation-only accreditations and acknowledgments from various vendors such as: 

• VMware vExpert
• VMware vExpert PRO
• VMware 100 Influencer
• Citrix Technology Advocate
• Cisco Spark Ambassador

Alongside this, Kyle assisted vendors on the creation of certifications, and helped in the creation of exam questions and criteria for many exams. 

Day to day in CDW, Kyle’s focus is on setting the technology direction and horizon-scanning for 'what comes next'. This means focusing 18 months in advance and building strategic plans, insights, and business cases to drive CDW's success. He works with leaders within our customer's organisations to map potential technology enablers to their business strategies.

"Just because a new piece of tech is trending doesn't mean it's right for your business." 

FAQ's

What's the IT focus in your role?

I focus on technology for today that’s fit for the future, as well as technology that could enable businesses to scale and evolve in ways they may not have found. With my developer background and problem solving skills, I look at challenges in different ways to other people allowing me to provide critical friend activities to our customers. 

How can we use the knowledge and expertise of the Office Of The CTO at my organisation?

You can use me and my team to ratify where and what you are doing as an extension of your team, or you can engage us to provide more blue sky and evangelistic ideas to the challenges and plans you are undertaking. 

What is the biggest technology trend in 2024?

Trends? Who wants to follow a trend? What is a trend doesn’t mean its right for your business. If you had asked me that last year then I was watching the metaverse technology landscape but with AI that has been overshadowed. 

That being said there are end user computing (workspace) solutions that can unlock your people to be more productive and engaged as well as Artificial Intelligence for user assisted workflow. The other trend is AI in general outside of workspace, but this is use case specific and heavily data dependent. I am excited to see where these go over the coming 12 months.  

How do you keep up to date with the industry? 

Podcasts, reading, analysts, event attendance, and working for one of the worlds largest technology organisations. Let me and my team do the research so you don’t have to.

How can my organisation get started on an integrated technology solution strategy?  

It comes down to doing the basics right first. You cannot innovate on poor foundations. For me I always look at 4 key things to start with: 

Number 1 – Understand your goal and aspiration 

Number 2 - Baseline - where are you today?

Number 3 – Build a plan 

Number 4 – Execute in a fail-fast approach 

These are very generic, however they can be used in most engagements in work or personal life. CDW can assist you with points 1 to 4 and beyond, making technology work, so people can do amazing things.