Palm Springs, Calif. – After 15 years in existence Ingram Micro’s VentureTech Network VTN is going global.
John Fago, senior director, channel marketing for Ingram Micro North America, told CDN that the company plans to establish a VTN chapter in the U.K. Fago invited three U.K.-based solution providers to the Fall VTN Invitational, held here, to show them all the benefits of the VTN community.
The hope is that they will sign up for VTN and from there attracted between eight to 12 other channel partners to create the first VTN chapter outside Canada and the U.S.
Fago added that there is also interest in establishing a Latin American VTN community, but that effort is a secondary priority to the U.K. move.
“This is really exciting and it’s on our 15th anniversary,” Fago said. Some of the leg work has been done by Canadian-born UK-based Ingram vice president Brent McCarty along with Jason Beal and Mark Chlebek.
Fago said that those three executives have been working with the three U.K. partners to show them the value of Ingram Micro VTN. The timeline for establishing a VTN U.K. chapter is slated for the fourth quarter and the U.K. chapter leader will also get a seat on the VTN council.
“The next step is for them to hold their first chapter meeting sometime in 2014,” Fago said.
In terms of another similar type of reseller community in the U.K., Fago said there really isn’t one. “There are groups such as the Heartland Group and ConnectWise, but nothing like VTN that addresses distribution and vendor partners. We hope to fill a void in that space,” Fago added.
Back in Canada and the U.S., the VTN community has grown by two members in Canada. The group sits 67 strong now. Overall there are 332 solution provider members in VTN.
Two initiatives that have really taken off from a VTN perspective is the Mastermind series and the ThinkTanks. Fago said that these two initiatives are “rocking to full rooms”. “The overall health of the VTN community is at 11 per cent growth. We have already hit a billion dollars with another $100 million more in revenue from last year. That’s double digit growth in North America for storage and servers through VTN vendor partners such as HP, Lenovo, Dell and Cisco,” Fago said.
For more information about Ingram Micro’s VentureTech Network visit www.im-vtn.com.