Two week ago in the CDN Distie Report Ingram Micro introduced a whopping number of new cloud offerings – 56 to be exact. I sat down with Ingram Micro Canada president Mark Snider at the recently concluded VTN Super Regional in Toronto to discuss why so many cloud offerings among other channel topics.
Snider said that “the cloud is real and its in play.” He brought up a statistic that shows 27 per cent the cloud services offered by channel partners went to net-new customers. “You are totally shut out if you do not have any cloud services,” he added.
Ingram started to look at a number of solutions in different areas that would interest a cloud broker and a traditional solution provider. That was one of the reasons for so many new cloud offerings. The distributor wanted to be broad because these two sets of channel partners are looking at different routes to market. Another factor is that the channel is looking to an Ingram Micro to offer a set of cloud services because the channel is more comfortable going through a distributor instead of non-traditional players such as Amazon Web Services or Salesforce.com. Snider added that the channel wants to get at the SMB and they can accelerate that route to market through validated cloud solutions from Ingram.
“Ingram has built a channel that may or may not have developed on its own if we did not put this much effort into it.
Business to date
Snider did acknowledge that the channel is in good shape so far this year, while some of the vendors are struggling. One example of this is in consolidation. Snider said there are no fire sales out there in the channel. “The consolidation has been for the most part aggressive. There is nothing out of distress,” he said.
He sees this trend continuing well into next year as laptops through ultrabooks sales will increase because of the release of Windows 8 along with continued sales strength in tablet devices. Ingram has the luxury of supporting all the top brands such as Apple and Samsung.
Addressing HP Canada changes
The Ingram Canada president also addressed the shake up at HP Canada. Snider has no concerns at all with the Printing and Personal Systems Group led by Lloyd Bryant. He said that there are basically the same people in charge that Ingram has been dealing with for years. He added that Bryant’s team is made up of excellent executives and quality people that the distributor has done well with in the past.
He did say that he was less familiar with the new team on the HP Canada Enterprise Group, but that he understood the moves company CEO Meg Whitman is making and fully supports them.
“They have been in contact with us and so we feel well supported by HP Canada,” Snider said.
