BURLINGAME, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 8, 2016) - GTDC SUMMIT N.A. -- The 2016 GTDC Summit concludes today in a record-breaking way with 17 CEOs and presidents as well as 50 other distribution industry senior management leaders joining more than 70+ vendor companies, their top channel executives, plus regional and global participants. This unprecedented tally in the 16-year history of the conference coincides with a dynamic new dimension to the Summit focused on emerging technology vendors, particularly in the cloud, with more than a dozen engaged in a dedicated session related to distribution and these up-and-comers new to the channel and distributor business models.

"The numbers speak volumes about this year's Summit in terms of the growth of the event -- from about 30 vendor companies and approximately 25 GTDC member attendees in 2002," commented GTDC CEO Tim Curran. "More importantly, we've taken the Summit's impact to an entirely new level, reflected in the depth and breadth of the overall conference content and takeaways. It's a unique knowledge forum that addresses today's vast opportunities and challenges from a well-rounded leadership perspective."

Elevating Partnerships and Strategic Value
In addition to bringing more distribution leaders and channel executives together, this year's Summit featured keynote speaker and futurist John Battelle, renowned as an entrepreneur, journalist, professor, and author who has founded or co-founded scores of new-era businesses as well as Wired Magazine and spinoffs such as HotWired. A broad range of panels, workshops and other speakers added to the deeper overall Summit content covering key trends and inherent partnership possibilities, realities and imperatives.

"Distributors and vendor channel leaders are united in enabling and driving channel success across the entire spectrum of new opportunities transforming all aspects of the technology industry," explained Curran, who also presented on The Dawning of a New Channel Ecosystem. "It's especially encouraging to see the proactive demeanor from the vendor community, at a time when the channel needs greater end-to-end support in solving complex business problems within all types of end customers, from SMB to large enterprise markets."

Channel Leaders Anticipate Stronger Indirect Business Growth
Channel executive attendees surveyed prior to the 2016 Summit indicated that they expect 2017 to be a banner year in distribution. The majority of respondents anticipate indirect sales to continue outpacing direct business, as services -- from cloud-related to recruiting and enablement -- become increasingly important to these partnerships.

Rising Stars Shine in New Ways
GTDC Summit 2016 in San Francisco also honored the industry's Rising Star award winners -- vendors with the highest total market share in each category as well as those with strongest year-over-year growth rates within The NPD Group's Distributor Track® (see related press release for details). It's the first time in the history of the awards that vendors are being recognized from both standpoints across the following eight categories:

Network Software

Back-up Software

Security Software

Unified Communications & Collaboration

ProAV

Hyperconverged

Stationary Computing

Mobile Computing

To learn more about the GTDC and its popular annual industry conferences, go to www.gtdc.org.

About The Global Technology Distribution Council
The Global Technology Distribution Council is the industry consortium representing the world's leading tech distributors. GTDC members drive more than $130 billion in annual worldwide sales of products, services and solutions through diverse business channels. GTDC conferences support the development and expansion of strategic supply-chain partnerships that continually address the fast-changing marketplace needs of vendors, end customers and distributors. GTDC members include AB S.A (WSE: ABPL), ABC Data (WSE: ABC), Arrow Electronics (NYSE: ARW), Avnet (NYSE: AVT), Computer Gross Italia (SES: MI), D&H Distributing, ELKO Group, Ingram Micro (NYSE: IM), Intcomex, Logicom (CSE: LOG), SiS Technologies (HKSE: 0529), ScanSource (NASDAQ: SCSC), SYNNEX (NYSE: SNX), Tarsus, Tech Data (NASDAQ: TECD), TIM AG and Westcon-Comstor.