In May 2013, Stratos Management Systems promoted John DeRocker, formerly president of its Nexus business, to the newly created role of senior vice president of worldwide channels. The move put him in charge of coordinating the vendors, distributors and local delivery needed to support U.S. customers operating abroad. It describes Stratos’s strategy at that time, not its current operations.
Who was Stratos’s new global channel SVP?
CRN reported on May 3, 2013, that John DeRocker had been promoted from president of Nexus to Stratos Management Systems’ newly created senior vice president of worldwide channels role. His responsibilities included managing international vendor and distribution relationships, developing manufacturing partnerships and engaging new customers. CRN’s report
Paula Winkler, previously a vice president at Aeritae Consulting Group, had taken over as Nexus president in March 2013, according to the same report.
Why was Stratos expanding internationally?
Stratos was responding to a customer request. DeRocker said the company’s international push began about eight months before the report, when a U.S. customer asked Stratos to handle its IT business overseas.
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He described a shift in multinational companies’ purchasing model: headquarters increasingly wanted control over specifications and pricing, while local organizations handled deployment. That contrasted with a country-by-country approach in which separate providers served each market. In DeRocker’s words, “Today, that’s changing. The mother companies want control of standardization and pricing with local delivery.”
What was Stratos’s reported international footprint?
DeRocker said Stratos established an international presence in Ireland, followed by Australia, Hong Kong, the U.K. and Germany. Those are locations named in the 2013 report; it does not establish Stratos’s present-day footprint.
How did the overseas delivery model work?
The model divided responsibility between Stratos and local manufacturer or distributor partners. DeRocker said that in the United States Stratos did all the work for the customer. Overseas, using EMC as an example, EMC typically handled rack, stack and deployment, with Stratos support available if needed. He said EMC performed that work “nine times out of 10” in the overseas arrangement he described.
Distribution depended on the vendor relationship and market. DeRocker identified Ingram Micro as important because it distributed products worldwide, while noting that Stratos had to work with different distributors for different vendor relationships. The arrangement required coordination among the customer, manufacturers and distributors: “All three need to coincide or this will not work,” he said.
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Who were the international customers, and what made expansion difficult?
DeRocker said about half of Stratos’s international clients were existing Nexus customers expanding the relationship; the other half were new U.S. customers seeking help with overseas deployments. These are interview figures reported in 2013, not current company metrics.
Building the operation required upfront spending on country registrations and overseas setup. DeRocker said Stratos had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars, with help from Ernst & Young, and described the investment as a high barrier to entry whose return did not arrive overnight. He identified coordinating regional manufacturers as the hardest challenge, followed by distributors. As he put it, “There’s not a single manufacturer who acts globally.”
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