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Arrow’s Eric Nowak on Memory Supply, Shorter Quotes and Order Timing

Arrow executive Eric Nowak said AIS was facing memory and SSD constraints, while suppliers’ uncertain lead times and prices made order timing more important.
From TheFinanceBase Team4 min to read
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In an early-2026 interview, Arrow Electronics executive Eric Nowak said memory and SSD supply constraints were affecting Arrow Intelligent Solutions (AIS), even though he had not yet seen a broad impact across Arrow’s enterprise customers. His account points to the practical challenge for channel partners: when suppliers cannot give dependable lead times and prices may move, deciding when to order matters as much as deciding what to buy.

What did Nowak say about the memory and SSD shortage?

Nowak, president of Arrow Electronics’ global enterprise computing solutions business, told CRN that suppliers were finding it harder to maintain lead times and build products. He said Arrow’s AIS manufacturing business was seeing shortages of memory and solid-state drives (SSDs).

He drew a distinction between that experience and Arrow’s enterprise customers more broadly: at the time of the interview, he said, Arrow had not yet seen the shortage’s effects widely across those customers. That is an executive’s description of Arrow’s experience, not a market-wide measurement. The interview was conducted in early 2026 around the GTDC Summit in Oceanside, California; the accessible source does not establish an exact publication date. Its comments should not be read as a current assessment of supply conditions.

Why did Arrow’s proposals have shorter validity?

Nowak said Arrow proposals were valid for one week rather than one month at the time of the interview. The CRN interviewer raised the 30-day comparison; Nowak connected the shorter window to prices and the ability to produce, saying, “The validity is strongly tied on the prices.” This was Arrow’s proposal practice as he described it, not a claim that all distributors or suppliers used one-week quotes.

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For a buyer, a shorter quote window can mean less time to approve a purchase at the stated price. It also makes supplier availability and the buyer’s own approval process more consequential: a quote’s price and availability may not remain settled while an order waits. The interview does not specify the terms of individual quotes or how often Arrow changed them.

How did Arrow handle orders when lead times were unclear?

For disk and memory orders connected to AIS, Nowak said providers were not giving lead times. Arrow took goods when they arrived, while Arrow and customers placed orders ahead of expected need. He described the aim as placing orders “with the right momentum,” rather than waiting for complete certainty that suppliers could not provide.

That approach reflects a trade-off, not a universal procurement rule. Ordering earlier may improve the chance of securing supply, but it can also commit a customer before its exact timing or requirements are clear. Waiting may preserve flexibility but leave fewer options if supply remains constrained. The interview gives no inventory levels, allocation figures, or customer-specific purchasing advice with which to quantify those risks.

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On hard drives, the interviewer raised a claim that Western Digital had already sold capacity for the year and the next. Nowak replied more narrowly that some suppliers had allocated their supply for the year. His response should not be treated as confirmation of the interviewer’s specific Western Digital premise or as a statement about every supplier.

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What is Arrow’s enterprise business mix?

Nowak characterized Arrow’s enterprise computing business as 75 percent cloud services and software and 25 percent hardware, and said it does not sell PCs. Those are figures and descriptions he gave in the interview, not independently audited segment data in the cited source. He also said Arrow’s cloud business had grown “30 percent-plus every year for years and years”; the interview does not define the measurement period or provide an independently verified growth series.

Why does Arrow still see a role for infrastructure and storage?

Nowak’s argument is that cloud adoption does not eliminate physical infrastructure. Many workloads use a hybrid approach, and AI deployments can require upgrades to computing infrastructure and storage. He said Arrow was seeing infrastructure growth tied to hybrid cloud and AI. These are his views on demand and Arrow’s business, not independent forecasts or quantified market estimates.

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What support does Arrow say it offers channel partners?

Nowak described Arrow’s platform as a way for partners to manage cloud subscriptions and support deployment, management, and orchestration. He said Arrow brings managed-services partners onto the platform and is developing AI offerings and agentic capabilities so partners do not have to build every solution themselves. He also identified migration work and AI talent as challenges partners face. These are descriptions of Arrow’s offerings and positioning from its executive, not an independent assessment of platform performance or partner outcomes.

What did the interview say about Arrow’s CEO search?

During the interview, Nowak said Arrow was interviewing and selecting candidates to replace former CEO Sean Kerins, without a target date. A later company fact sheet dated April 15, 2026, lists William F. Austen as interim president and CEO and Nowak as president of global enterprise computing solutions: Arrow Electronics fact sheet. A subsequent CRN report quotes Austen discussing the continuing search and the candidate Arrow wanted. These dated sources provide context; they do not establish a later leadership change.

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