By Lynette Whiley
Contributing writer
Ingram Micro held its 2019 Partner Experience Roadshow recently in Toronto, and it was clear that collaboration across the Canadian tech industry has become the norm.
“As technology evolves, no one partner will be able to deliver end to end solutions anymore; it will take an army”, said Bill Brandel, Ingram Micro’s country chief executive. “The closed model is a thing of the past, and now more than ever, partners need to build a strong network to ensure customized delivery of needs.”
The distributor’s roadshow provides the opportunity for partners to network and build inherent value in to their offering as a result. The show will travel across the country, ending in Richmond B.C. in October.
One area that Brandel sees as a significant opportunity for channel partners is IT asset disposition (ITAD). Ingram Micro is the only global distributor to enjoy top secret security clearance in Canada and to have achieved ISO 37001, better known as anti bribery certification.
“We take security seriously and we see ITAD as a great source of revenue,” he said, adding customers want a trusted partner to not only install new systems but to also remove legacy hardware, wipe it, make it remarketable and above all, ensure no data is exposed in the process.
The key to the Ingram Micro success, indicated Greg Onoprijenko, the company’s director of cloud, is its unique, automated, cloud platform strategy.
Our strategy to invest early in a fully dedicated cloud team has paid off” Onoprijenko told CDN. “We have the largest cloud team in the world with 1500 employees focused on engineering, technical support and sales, marketing and human resources. In Canada we are just over 30 and growing fast.”
Strategic acquisitions early on provided the foundation for learning and owning everything including its hosting capabilities, and because Ingram Micro owns the IP for their cloud marketplace, they can easily adapt and customize as required.
Meanwhile, the company is also quietly building their army of partners to lead the way across all markets. The roadshow provides a way for them to connect, network and educate across all fronts. In the security space specifically, this is critical.
Detected threats and encrypted traffic is going through the roof, meanwhile people’s confidence in their security is low – very low. The 2019 Scalar Security Study shows only 27 per cent of SMB companies are confident in their organisation’s ability to prevent a breach from happening, and only 34 per cent are confident in their ability to detect and respond once a breach has happened. At the roadshow event, keynote Sean Earhard, Cisco’s advanced threat solution specialist, spoke about the opportunity that metadata presents.
Traditionally the IT department is challenged with using heavy, difficult-to-deploy tools that delay solving security challenges. There is also the updating, upgrading and ongoing maintenance required for these tools. Looking at metadata presents a simple way to evaluate a threat quickly and effectively with little impact on the end user. For partners, he added, it’s also a great opportunity for to solve customer problems.