IT Woman of the Year Nominee:

Mary Piehler

VP of Sales,
ServerWare Corporation

Mary Piehler has been a dedicated IT professional for 30 years in the Rochester community. Her experience spans the spectrum of 25 years at Fortune 500 companies such as the NCR Corporation and Digital Equipment Corporation/Compaq (now known as Hewlett Packard). For 30 years she has been designing and delivering IT solutions to customers that improve their business.

Working as the District Manager for Digital, she steered the 200+ Upstate NY employees through the Compaq merger in 1999. At the time, this was the largest technology merger in the history of the industry. Piehler was responsible for the consolidation of the regional teams for both companies, as well as the integration of the customer base. This represented $260,000,000 in revenue in Upstate NY. She was the only District Manager from Digital in the Mid Atlantic Region who was asked to join the Compaq Management team. Mary worked tirelessly to insure that customers were taken care of, and employees felt as secure as possible in the new company. In 2001, her team received Compaq's Presidential award for outstanding service and revenue growth. She quietly has accumulated accolades through the years, and people in the IT industry all know her for her tenacity.

In 2001, she left HP and moved over to the IT channel market, where she excelled at strategic development and revenue growth for a value added reseller (VAR) for the past 7 years. Shortly after joining the channel, HP acquired Compaq, and Mary got to use her M&A skills again as she managed her company's growth, but now as an HP partner/value added reseller (VAR). Within 5 years, she built a $26 million company and became known for her quick decisions and ability to implement during challenging times. In October 2007 she was nominated by Ingram micro (one of the largest worldwide distributors) for their "Spirit Award" at their Venture Tech conference in Palm Springs.

Her technical expertise ranges from desktop solutions to enterprise level applications. Most impressively is the list of local customers she has interacted with through the years from Eastman Kodak, Paychex, Constellation, Excellus, Frontier, Paetec, University of Rochester and almost all of the SUNY institutions, as well as the K-12 districts. Mary is just as comfortable with the CEO of an IT company, as she is with a system administrator. She knows this business, can talk the talk, and is probably the most connected IT person I know, as far as getting vendors to work together and bring a tech deal to closure.

In the fall of 2008, she joined ServerWare Corporation, a SUN and HP partner and a NYS certified woman business enterprise (WBE). While major vendors have reduced resources in Upstate, Piehler has dedicated her IT career to local businesses. She believes customers deserve great service and Tier I products, and they should be able to do business locally, face to face, not with an 800 number. This is not just good business, this is good for the local economy. As an Executive Committee member of the Rochester Small Business Council (SBC) she spends a lot of time with local businesses meeting the challenges they face as they look for ways to better invest in IT. She has leveraged all her industry connections to make this possible, as ServerWare only represents Tier 1 IT companies (no white-boxes, no gray market products). She is truly a "global thinker, who is all about acting locally". Her customers remain in touch with her, many for 20+ years.

Mary is a nationally recognized IT leader and well known outside of Rochester as an industry veteran. In sales alone, she has been responsible for placing over $1 billion dollars of IT equipment into local accounts. She has recently been recognized for her influence and her accomplishments by a major computer industry publication, VARBusiness Magazine. She has also been invited to serve on national and global advisory boards for Fortune 500 IT companies. This is a tribute to her business acumen as well as her IT knowledge.