Gary Grimes, Executive Director
Prior to joining the SWOT Management Group team, Mr. Grimes enjoyed a long, successful career at Sun Microsystems. In the years 1995 through 2001 Mr. Grimes served as the Area Vice President (AVP) for Sun’s Southern Area, a 13 state geography that Mr. Grimes led to over $1B in sales in Sun’s FY01. In his role as AVP, Mr. Grimes was responsible for all sales, services, training and channel revenue. Mr. Grimes recognized early that his organization could only scale through effective partnering with key resellers, OEM, System Integrators and Distributors, and throughout his seven years as AVP the Southern Area consistently led Sun in terms of channel revenue as a percentage of total Area revenue. In 2001 Sun asked Mr. Grimes to take over the US channel organization in an attempt to reestablish that channel as a strategic Sun asset. Over the next 3 years in his role of VP, Partner Management, Mr. Grimes and his team designed and introduced the “Putting Partners First Initiative” a comprehensive partner umbrella program that was recognized by CMP Media as “the most effective partner program in the industry”. In 2004, Mr. Grimes was recognized by VAR Business for his services to the channel when that periodical awarded him the “VAR Business Lifetime Achievement” award.

e-mail Gary Grimes