Distribution Watch: Avnet, Ingram Micro July 2015

Happy Friday all! This week we’ve got some exciting updates from our distribution friends over at Avnet (AVT) and Ingram Micro (IM). Let’s get started!

Avnet: Kevin Yapp has been named senior vice president of Digital Transformation at Avnet Electronics Marketing, the company announced this week. As the company’s first leader of digital transformation, Yapp will be critical in advancing the company’s digital strategy and evaluating all new resources and investments, according to the announcement.

Yapp will also chair a division-wide global digital project management organization, and will report to Avnet EM Global President Gerry Fay.

“Kevin’s years of experience working in complex multi-channel environments globally will be a tremendous asset to Avnet as we continue to adapt our business model in order to augment our world-class design and supply chain solutions offerings with a differentiated online experience—providing the speed, flexibility and convenience our customers need to stay competitive,” said Fay, in a statement. “With his successful e-commerce track record and creative approach, I am confident Kevin will further strengthen Avnet’s ability to deliver a consistent and meaningful digital user-experience around the world.”

Ingram Micro: Ingram Micro was on hand at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference this week in Orlando, where the distributor revealed several new additions and enhancements to its Cloud Marketplace. New additions to the program include support for five languages as well as eight currencies including the British pound, dollar, euro, krona and peso.

The company also announced it will allow channel partners in the United States, Canada and Mexico to convert their Office 365 Advisor subscriptions to its Cloud Service Provider (CSP) program. Additional regions are expected to be added in the near future.

Ingram’s Cloud Store has also gone live, which will allow select channel partners to create and manage their own B2C online cloud stores with self-branded solutions.

In other news, Ingram Micro Canada signed a distribution agreement with flash storage array provider Tegile Systems to provide its portfolio to Ingram partners throughout Canada.

"With Tegile, our channel partners can dial up or down the amount of flash storage they need and at the same time gain the high performance of flash with the economics of disk storage,” said said Dave Mason, executive director of Advanced Solutions at Ingram Micro Canada. “It's a powerful combination that will not only perform well for our mutual partners and their customers, but also complement Ingram Micro's growing storage and data center offerings."

That’s all for now, but you can count on us being back here next week with the latest updates and announcements from all of your favorite distributors. Until then, keep on distributing.