Azlan confirms departure of boss Ian French

Azlan has confirmed that boss Ian French is stepping down to concentrate on his consultancy business Siceo and the Gapaid charity he chairs but will continue to provide advisory services to the Basingstoke-based distributor.

His departure, revealed by MicroScope blog Reseller Radar last week, was expected as his employment at Azlan, the enterprise arm of Computer 2000, was always on an interim consultancy basis.

French came on board as business development director to grow Azlan organically after it was beaten to the acquisition of CCD by arch rival Ingram Micro, replacing previous incumbent Andy Sheppard at the start of 2010.

During his tenure French helped to build a heavyweight management team and attract enterprise vendors including HP Services and Value Storage, and Tandberg.

"Ian joined us to perform a specific task of achieving breakthrough with the Azlan business in terms of people calibre, value capability and market positioning, which he has done," said C2000 managing director Andy Gass.

Gass said that the search for a replacement is "on-going" but did not indicate if there was an internal candidate in mind or if he planned to recruit outside of the business.

French added: "I now look forward to being a strategic advisor and consultant" to the distributor.