CDW 2012 Annual Report Download - page 8

Table of Contents
and solution knowledge and capabilities that we bring to our customers' IT challenges and provide us with access to favorable pricing, tools and
resources, including vendor incentive programs, which we use to provide additional value to our customers. Our vendor partners also regularly
recognize us with top awards and select us to develop and grow new customer solutions.
History
CDW was founded in 1984. In 2003, we purchased selected U.S. assets and the Canadian operations of Micro Warehouse, which
extended our growth platform into Canada. In 2006, we acquired Berbee Information Networks Corporation, a regional provider of technology
products, solutions and customized engineering services in advanced technologies primarily across Cisco, IBM and Microsoft portfolios. This
acquisition increased our capabilities in customized engineering services and managed services.
On October 12, 2007, CDW Corporation, an Illinois corporation, was acquired through a merger transaction by an entity controlled by
investment funds affiliated with Madison Dearborn Partners, LLC and Providence Equity Partners L.L.C. (the “Acquisition”).
CDW Corporation
continued as the surviving corporation and same legal entity after the Acquisition, but became a wholly owned subsidiary of VH Holdings, Inc.,
a Delaware corporation.
On December 31, 2009, CDW Corporation merged into CDWC LLC, an Illinois limited liability company owned by VH Holdings,
Inc., with CDWC LLC as the surviving entity. This change had no impact on our operations or management. On December 31, 2009, CDWC
LLC was renamed CDW LLC (“CDW LLC”). On August 17, 2010, VH Holdings, Inc. was renamed CDW Corporation (“Parent”), a Delaware
corporation.
Throughout this report, the terms “the Company” and “CDW” refer to Parent and its 100% owned subsidiaries subsequent to the
Acquisition.
Parent is owned directly by CDW Holdings LLC, a company controlled by investment funds affiliated with Madison Dearborn Partners,
LLC and Providence Equity Partners L.L.C. (the “Equity Sponsors”), certain other co-investors and certain members of CDW management. See
“Equity Sponsors” below.
Our Market
We believe our addressable market in the U.S. represents more than $200 billion in annual sales and for the year ended December 31,
2012, our net sales of $10.1 billion represented approximately 5% of that market. New technologies, including cloud, virtualization and mobility,
coupled with the resulting increase in demand for data as well as aging infrastructure, are increasingly requiring businesses and institutions to
seek integrated solutions to their IT needs. We expect this trend to continue for the foreseeable future, with end-user demand for business
efficiency and productivity driving future IT spending growth.
Our Offerings
Our offerings range from discrete hardware and software products and services to complex integrated solutions that include one or more
of these elements. We believe our customers increasingly view technology purchases as integrated solutions rather than discrete product and
service categories. Our hardware products include notebooks/mobile devices (including tablets), network communications, enterprise and data
storage, video monitors, printers, desktop computers and servers. Our software products include application suites, security, virtualization,
operating systems, network management and Software as a Service (“SaaS”) offerings. We also provide a full suite of value-added-services,
which range from basic installation, warranty and repair services to custom configuration, data center and network implementation services, as
well as managed services that include Infrastructure as a Service (“IaaS”) offerings.
We also offer a variety of integrated solutions, such as:
• Mobility : We assist our customers with the selection, procurement and integration of mobile security software, hardware
devices such as smartphones, tablets and notebooks, and cellular wireless activation systems. We also provide mobile device
management applications with policy and security management capabilities across a variety of mobile operating systems and platforms.
• Security : We assess our customers' security needs and provide them with threat prevention tools in order to protect their
networks, servers and applications, such as anti-virus, anti-spam, content filtering, intrusion prevention, firewall and virtual private
network services, and network access control. We also design and implement data loss prevention solutions, using data monitoring and
encryption across a wide array of devices to ensure the security of customer information, personal employee information and research
and development data.
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