The Professional Computing Association (PCA) is embarking on an aggressive growth drive as it looks to drum up membership in 2008.

The organisation has appointed Dennis Scoot as a business development consultant, tasked with the job of encouraging more vendors and distributors to join the organisation as full members. At present the PCA has over 850 members and is keen to pass the 1,000 member milestone.

Scott said: “I have been aware of the PCA and its activities for a considerable time now. I have been very impressed by the events I have attended and have the greatest respect for all the PCA has achieved. I now aim to use my expertise to help develop it even further and drive membership towards and beyond the 1,000 mark.”

In separate news, PCA chairman Derek Jones has recently stepped down from his role at reseller buying group Integra, in a move to spend more time on the PCA.

Jones said: “An even stronger PCA is vitally important for the channel and is good for all the players. Over the years, the actions we have taken on behalf of the marketplace have benefited just about everyone. One of my key roles over the next few weeks will be to make sure that everyone knows that.

“We have built some great partnerships that bring real benefits to our members. I’ll be aiming to make sure that we bring further partnership benefits to all our members and ensure that membership of the PCA becomes an essential ingredient to all who want to do good business in the channel.”

Keith Warburton, PCA founder, said: “More and more vendors are seeing membership of the PCA as a superb and very cost-effective way to reach out to the reseller community. They know and understand that resellers essential to the effective delivery of their solutions to the widest possible market.

“By being full members of the PCA, vendors can demonstrate that they really are fully committed to channel partnerships," he added. "And at the same time all of our members, large and small, can benefit from the great deals we bring them on a wide variety of products and services ranging from health insurance to tyres. I am delighted that we are able to make use of the services not just of Derek and Dennis but of our whole team of elected and co-opted directors”.

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