The Buzz: HP Canada changes leaders, TD SYNNEX puts Canadian investment in focus, and Ingram Micro rides AI demand

Robert Dutt: Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca. I’m Robert Dutt, and today is Friday, October 30, 2026.

We’ve got a particularly Canadian edition to wrap up the week, with a leadership shakeup at HP Canada, a look at TD SYNNEX’s Inspire Canada conference in Toronto, and strong quarterly results from Ingram Micro, driven in part by demand for AI infrastructure.

First up, some significant leadership changes at HP Canada, affecting both the company’s top Canadian position and its channel organization.

Michelle Biase, HP Canada’s president and managing director, is moving into a new role as vice president of U.S. Corporate Sales.

Taking over HP Canada’s leadership on an interim basis is John Cammalleri, who has been the company’s Canadian channel chief for years.

And with John moving into that position, April Marshall will assume responsibility for Canada Commercial Channel Sales.

HP confirmed those changes to ChannelBuzz.ca this week.

There’s an interesting bit of history here, because HP Canada’s last three leaders have all come from channel backgrounds.

John, of course, has spent years leading HP’s Canadian channel business. Michelle returned to HP after spending time at distributor D&H. And before Michelle, Mary Ann Yule came to HP from CDW Canada.

So while there’s a leadership transition underway, there’s also considerable continuity in the kind of experience HP is putting at the top of its Canadian organization.

We’ll be interested to see what that means for Canadian partners as the new leadership team settles in.

Next, TD SYNNEX held its Inspire Canada conference in Toronto yesterday, and there were a couple of interesting developments worth highlighting.

One is a substantial investment in the company’s Canadian distribution infrastructure.

TD SYNNEX is planning a new distribution facility in Caledon, Ontario, measuring approximately eight hundred and fifty thousand square feet, with room to expand by another forty percent.

The company expects the facility to be completed in the first half of twenty twenty-eight.

It’s a significant investment in TD SYNNEX’s Canadian operations, and one that should give the distributor additional capacity as its business evolves.

The other development is the Canadian rollout of MyShop, TD SYNNEX’s e-commerce offering for partners.

I spoke with Meredith Payne about the rollout, and she explained that the company is working with selected Canadian partners on customized implementations.

So this isn’t a broad launch where every Canadian partner gets exactly the same experience on day one. It’s a more deliberate approach, with TD SYNNEX working closely with participating partners.

And that fits into the company’s broader PartnerFirst strategy.

TD SYNNEX has been expanding the AI-powered capabilities of its digital platform, with the goal of making it easier for partners to find products, prepare quotes, place orders and manage transactions.

Some of those developments were announced earlier this month at the company’s U.S. Inspire event, but they were an important part of the discussion in Canada as well.

One of the particularly interesting themes from my conversation with Meredith was how quickly agentic commerce could change the way partners interact with distributors.

We’ll have much more from Inspire Canada next week on In The Channel.

I’ve recorded conversations with TD SYNNEX Canada president Chris Fabes about the distributor’s Canadian strategy, including the Caledon investment, and with Meredith Payne about PartnerFirst, MyShop and the evolution of agentic commerce.

And finally today, Ingram Micro has reported a strong third quarter, with AI infrastructure and cloud solutions helping drive significant growth for the distributor.

Ingram reported fifteen point two billion dollars in quarterly sales, an increase of twenty point eight percent from a year earlier.

Adjusted earnings per share rose twenty-six point four percent to ninety-one cents, and both revenue and earnings came in ahead of analyst expectations.

The company also raised its financial outlook.

Ingram says growth was particularly strong in its Advanced Solutions business, including GPUs and AI infrastructure, as well as its cloud solutions business.

But there’s an interesting wrinkle in those results.

While AI infrastructure demand is helping drive substantial sales growth, Ingram also reported pressure on gross margins because those GPU and AI infrastructure products generally carry lower margins.

And that’s a useful reminder that the AI infrastructure boom isn’t necessarily an uncomplicated profitability story.

There’s clearly a tremendous amount of money being spent on the infrastructure required to support AI workloads.

But the real opportunity for solution providers may be in the services around that infrastructure: helping customers design, deploy, secure, integrate and manage increasingly complex environments.

Ingram’s results offer another indication of just how significant AI infrastructure demand has become for the channel, while also illustrating the importance of finding ways to capture value beyond the hardware transaction itself.

You can find more details on all three stories at ChannelBuzz.ca.

And before we go, a couple of notes on In The Channel.

Later today on In The Channel, we’ve got my conversation with Glenn Kaul of CDW Canada, recorded at Cisco Partner Summit in Vancouver.

Glenn offers a particularly interesting solution-provider perspective on how AI is changing the market.

We discuss how demand for AI infrastructure is affecting traditional IT purchasing patterns, how increasingly sophisticated security threats are changing the services partners need to deliver, and how AI itself could reshape the economics of professional services.

And if you haven’t heard it yet, yesterday’s In The Channel featured my conversation with Raj and Erin from Cisco Partner Summit, looking at the opportunities emerging for partners as Cisco’s technology and partner strategy evolve.

Both episodes are available through ChannelBuzz.ca and wherever you get your podcasts.

And that’s how we’re seeing the headlines today.

I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca. Thanks for listening, and have a great day.