Eaton Channel Champion Herve Tardy Leaves After ‘Incredible 17-Year Ride’

Herve Tardy, who has spent more than half of his 30 years in the data center power management industry leading the channel charge at Eaton, has departed the company, leaving behind a legacy of strong channel advocacy.

Long-time Eaton channel chief Hervé Tardy Monday spent his last day at the power management company, according to a LinkedIn post.

“Today was my last day at Eaton after an incredible 17-year ride, which took a no-name brand in the IT channel to a solid No. 2 position and 25 percent market share,” Tardy said in the LinkedIn post. “I want to thank Eaton for being willing to seriously invest in this program for several years to establish the necessary trust with our channel partners.”

Tardy also thanked “all the Eaton people over the years who believed in my vision for the business and made it a reality. We were an incredible team with a solid bond and eagerness to win whatever the difficulties.”

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He also had words of gratitude for Eaton solution providers.

“More importantly, I want to thank our channel partners who have been trusting us for all these years because they liked our unique value proposition,” he said.

In the post, Tardy indicated that he will be seeking a new role.

“I'm excited about the new opportunities which will come my way and am ready to put my relentless passion into new endeavors while I will keep on cheering for Eaton future successes,” Tardy said.

Tardy, who has spent 30 years in the data center power industry, including the last 16 and a half years with Eaton, is taking time to spend with his family before making any new moves, a source close to Eaton told CRN.

He has been a perennial honoree on CRN’s annual 50 Most Influential Channel Chiefs list, building a reputation for aggressively charting Eaton’s channel course against a strong channel rival in American Power Conversion, now part of Schneider Electric.

In his role as channel chief, he championed moves to push traditional power management resellers beyond their comfort zone to offer full business solutions, develop software skills and, in recent years, to build out managed services capabilities supported by evolving features in Eaton’s product lines.

He also guided the multi-year integration of Eaton’s and Tripp Lite’s channel strategies after Eaton acquired Tripp Lite in 2021 in a blockbuster $1.65 billion deal that brought together two formal rivals.

“[Tardy] put an amazing partner program together, and really [helped merge] the Tripp Lite products together with Eaton products,” said Michael Goldstein, president of Eaton channel partner LAN Infotech, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., via a text message to CRN.

Goldstein said he was surprised to hear that Tardy is no longer with Eaton.

Keith Nelson, CEO and CISO at Vistem Solutions, an Irvine, Calif.-based solution provider, said that Eaton has been a good partner to solution providers under Tardy.

Vistem has been working with Eaton to service critical customers such as the Ports of Los Angeles and aircraft maker Boeing. Working with Eaton, for example, the Ports of Los Angeles have gone over 16 years without missing a single dispatch session, Nelson said.

“Clients like that always need sophisticated power and help from engineers who could provide advanced configurations,” he said, noting that Eaton has always given Vistem access to advanced engineering.

Tardy declined to talk about his departure or his future plans when reached via phone late Monday by CRN. Eaton was unable to respond to a late-in-the-day CRN request for comment.

Tardy joined Eaton in mid-2011 as vice president of IT channel sales and marketing for the Americas, but for the last nearly three years has served as vice president of marketing and strategy for the company’s Critical Power & Digital Infrastructure Division.

Prior to joining Eaton, Tardy spent nearly 13 years at MGE UPS Systems, most recently as general manager for that company’s single-phase UPS business. Before that, he spent two years as director of IT distribution sales in France for Schneider Electric.