Ingram Micro Resellers Get Access to Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution

Two Ingram Micro divisions have signed new suppliers, giving resellers more options in the cloud and mobility management fields.

First, the North America Services Division of Ingram Micro has rolled out Cisco’s Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) to all qualified Cisco partners in the U.S. and Canada, after doing beta testing among a select few. The biggest benefit of HCS is that it helps partners establish or supplement a recurring revenue stream. That’s because HCS is offered on a subscription, as-a-service basis, which means it requires no up-front investment from partners. HCS features Cisco platforms including Unified Communications, Customer Collaboration and WebEx.

Ingram Micro also is teaming with Cisco’s Advanced Services unit, which helps partners provision and deploy HCS, as well as offer around-the-clock management, monitoring, and Level 2 and Level 3 technical support.

This new HCS service allows Ingram Micro to add value by reducing complexity associated with building and selling cloud collaboration solutions," said Richard McLeod, senior director of worldwide partner collaboration sales at Cisco. As a result, he added, Cisco partners are able "to provide choice to customers in terms of how they consume collaboration solutions, be it from the cloud, via a managed service, on premise or some combination.”

Meantime, Ingram Micro Mobility has teamed with GLOBO, which specializes in mobility management and telecom software. Ingram Micro resellers in North America may offer GO!Enterprise, marketed as "mobility in a box" to enterprises and SMBs. GO!Enterprise is a plug-and-play platform that includes hosted Microsoft Exchange accounts, cloud hosting and file storage, office productivity and collaboration apps, a development studio for creating customized apps, and an Enterprise Mobility Management console for managing corporate assets. The SMB version of GO!Enterprise supports up to 150 devices. The enterprise edition is sold on an annual licensing model.