In the early 1980s, buying IT gear was a maze of niche vendors, technical specs, and fragmented suppliers. CDW saw an opportunity to tame this complexity. Over four decades, it evolved from a one-man shop into a $20+ billion Fortune 500 solutions provider by acting as a trusted intermediary for businesses drowning in tech choices.

CDW’s total sales in 2024, up fivefold from about $4 billion in 2001. This explosive growth highlights how CDW’s one-stop, expert-driven model unlocked a massive market opportunity, turning the headaches of IT procurement into a $20B+ revenue stream.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

Before CDW became a household name in IT buying, enterprise procurement meant death by a thousand decisions. A typical IT organization had to stitch together hardware, software, cloud subscriptions, and services from a long tail of manufacturers, distributors, specialty VARs, and service firms, each with different terms, certifications, and renewal cycles.

That sprawl only intensified as IT stopped being discrete purchases and turned into integrated outcomes spanning security, hybrid infrastructure, digital workplace, and cloud operations. CDW's own filings describe this shift plainly: customers increasingly view technology purchases as integrated solutions vital to business outcomes, not neatly separated product categories.

Even the mechanics of buying became harder. Enterprise licensing and multi-year software agreements introduced new layers of contractual complexity where the reseller might act as an agent (earning fees or commissions) while the vendor invoices directly. That arrangement is efficient, but it means procurement teams must navigate different fulfillment models and responsibilities across the stack.

At the same time, delivery expectations moved from "ship me boxes" to "ship me boxes, configure them, integrate them, support them, secure them, and help me migrate workloads." When customers face economic uncertainty, they do not stop buying tech. They get more cautious and measured. CDW explicitly called out 2024 as a year where uncertainty and the "complex technology landscape" led customers to take a more careful approach to spending. That dynamic tends to reward partners that can reduce risk and ambiguity, not vendors that simply offer the lowest price.

What makes the opportunity particularly compelling is the market's sheer fragmentation. Despite its scale, CDW commands just 5% of a roughly $400 billion addressable market. Thousands of smaller VARs compete for the remaining share, but CDW stands approximately three times larger than its nearest competitor. That creates a durable runway for growth by simply doing what it already does well.

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CDW won by making itself the place where complexity goes to get simplified. The headline number is breadth: CDW offers more than 100,000 products and services from over 1,000 vendor partners, spanning the major platforms buyers actually standardize on. But breadth alone is not the moat. The real differentiation is how CDW wraps that catalog with human expertise and delivery capability so customers can buy a working solution rather than a shopping cart of parts.

In its 10-K, CDW describes the operating model as sales teams aligned to distinct customer end-markets (corporate, small business, government, education, healthcare) supported by highly skilled specialists and engineers who help design and implement solutions that match specific needs. That is the "Amazon for IT" angle with a crucial twist: CDW is not trying to replace expert judgment with self-serve ecommerce. It is using scale to put expert judgment on rails.

The vendor side plays a crucial role too. In 2024, CDW generated $2.0 billion in net sales from each of its three largest vendor partners, and it highlights top-tier certifications across major vendors as a source of favorable pricing, access to tools, and incentive programs that CDW translates into customer value. This is how the intermediary becomes more than a reseller: certifications plus volume create a privileged position in the channel, and that privileged position funds the consultative layer customers actually want.

CDW systematically expanded into higher-value services that make the relationship stickier. Services revenue reached $1.87 billion in 2024, growing 6% year-over-year and representing the company's highest-growth segment. Its filings spell out a services mix that includes advisory and design, implementation, managed services, and cloud migration across public, private, and hybrid environments.

CDW's acquisition strategy has focused on buying capability to accelerate that shift. Its acquisition of Sirius for $2.5 billion was framed as a way to significantly accelerate services and solutions across the full stack, while the recent Mission Cloud Services acquisition strengthens cloud professional services and managed services tied to lifecycle delivery across cloud, data, AI, and platform engineering.

When a middleman stops being just a middleman and starts being the infrastructure, the results speak for themselves.

CDW finished 2024 with $21.0B in net sales, $4.6B in gross profit, and $1.078B in net income. Gross margin held steady year-over-year at 21.9%, and operating income reached $1.651B at a 7.9% margin. That stability matters because it shows CDW can absorb product mix shifts and still protect profitability. A meaningful portion of what it sells is solutions and services, not pure commodity hardware.

What's also telling is how broad the engine is. In the U.S. business (about 90% of net sales), CDW runs five dedicated customer channels and notes that each generated $1.5B or more in 2024 net sales. It also reported $2.5B of net sales from the UK and Canada combined. That diversification is not just nice-to-have. CDW explicitly argues it helps the company weather economic and technology cycles and continue gaining share.

The scale is real, operationally. CDW reports serving 250,000+ customers and having roughly 15,100 coworkers, which is the kind of footprint you need to act as an extension of a customer's IT organization rather than a vendor in a quote spreadsheet. And CDW's market position reflects that value. The company holds roughly 5% of a $400B addressable market and is approximately three times larger than its nearest competitor.

When you combine that scale with deep vendor partnerships, specialized engineering support, and expanding managed/cloud services, you get a business that can stay relevant as procurement shifts from "buying products" to "buying outcomes." For 2025, CDW continues to target exceeding US IT market growth by 200 to 300 basis points. That durability is proof that, in IT procurement, the winning intermediary is the one that reduces risk and complexity so effectively that it becomes the default way large organizations buy.

Key Takeaways for you to consider…

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5 – customer channels generating $1.5B or more in 2024

$291M – CDW’s net income for Q3 2025

250,000+ – Number of customers that CDW serves across business, government, education, and healthcare sectors

21.9% - Gross profit margin for FY 2024

$2B – in net sales from each of CDW’s 3 largest vendor partners

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