Ingram Micro Cloud Pushes Channel IaaS Sales, Hands Out Awards

INGRAM MICRO CLOUD SUMMIT — Ingram Micro is laying out new support it says partners need to better deliver infrastructure as a service.

Ingram Micro Cloud used the first day of its Cloud Summit in Phoenix to unveil a long list of solutions of tools that are said to help partners master IaaS. The solutions include a new generation of Odin Automation – Ingram Micro’s cloud delivery program; Ingram Micro Cloud Orchestrator – which simplifies and automates workloads in various cloud environments; and an expanded cloud referral program.

Renee Bergeron, Ingram Micro’s senior vice president of global cloud, says that although indirect channels account for 55 percent of cloud revenue, they only comprise 20 percent of IaaS revenue. She called IaaS “the biggest opportunity” for channel partners.

“There’s obviously a gap here, and we’re obviously overperforming on SaaS as a channel and underperforming on IaaS,” she said Thursday. “That means that a lot more work has to be done.”

Bergeron says SaaS solutions are simpler when it comes to taking them to market.

“If you think back to six years ago when we started, we had to do a lot of heavy lifting, bringing together business transformation and enablement programs, and so we gravitated to this software as a-service solution,” she said.{ad}

Nimesh Davé, Ingram Micro’s executive vice president of global cloud, says there is a clear disparity in the technical competence that SaaS and IaaS require.

“It’s significantly less complicated to sell Office 365 to a business,” he said.

Ingram Micro Cloud executives say the historical lack of indirect IaaS sales is why the company is rolling out solutions to enable partners in that area.

The company launched APS Connect, an integration technology that accelerates service deployment and onboarding for ISVs. The company also unveiled the Ingram Micro Federation Program, which allows service providers to deepen their portfolios by instantly accessing solutions from cloud vendors.

Ingram Micro Cloud also announced partnerships with Cisco Spark and Symantec earlier this week.

Partner Awards

Ingram Micro Cloud recognized 13 partners that have performed well in sales and helped “reinvent the customer experience.” The following took home awards:

(winners on next page)

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“All of these channel partners have been recognized for their ability to achieve performance excellence, whether through sales achievements, service delivery or innovation, in a rapidly changing and challenging marketplace,” Davé said.{ad}

HNA Integration

The HNA Group bought Ingram Micro for $6 billion last year.

Paul Bay, Ingram Micro’s executive vice president and group president of Americas, said in a conference with media that the acquisition has not brought about any layoffs.

“There has been no change from an employee perspective, and you can ask everybody in the hallways, which is a good thing,” he said.