Ingram Micro opens its cloud marketplace up to more ISVs

Ingram Micro has kicked off its 2020 Cloud Summit event with a focus on encouraging resellers to embrace the “more as a service” concept and get their own IP hosted on its marketplace.

The distributor supports 55,000 partners across 40 countries and has invested more than $500m to build the cloud ecosystem. The channel player is using the Cloud Summit sessions to promote the adoption of more services and to encourage resellers to not only sell more, but also get more deeply involved with their own technology offerings.

Ingram is running the event virtually to try to keep its communication with partners going, despite the challenges posed by the coronavirus.

Nimesh Dave, president, Ingram Micro Cloud & CloudBlue, used his keynote at the Cloud Summit to update partners on the progress the firm has made in the cloud.

“For nearly a decade, we have been ushering you, our reselling partners and your customers, towards a new horizon of cloud computing, assuring you that it was on its way,” he said. “We provided the foresight, the knowhow and the technology to increase profits and scale businesses at a pace previously unimaginable.”

Dave said those that had embraced services were prospering, but more progress could be made and the organisation was encouraging partners to take advantage of the investments it had sunk into building an ecosystem that allowed resellers to onboard additional options at the click of a mouse.

“It is important to provide through our commerce systems, not only to Ingram, but also all of our other customers around the globe, the ability to sell more, to add adjacent products into their portfolio, to be able to serve different partner groups,” he said.

Ingram has been investing in its own IP and has developed CloudBlue, which can make it easy for vendors to add their products into its ecosystem.

The event included details of CloudBlue Connect, which makes it easier for resellers to automate contracts and orders, product flows from vendors and payments that are underpinned by the BlueCloud Commerce platform.

Another feature that resellers can start to look out for on the distributor’s cloud marketplace is more localised content generated by regional ISVs, he said.

“We are going to introduce the ability in the coming weeks for out value-added resellers and MSPs and partners alike, to offer their own services through our marketplace, giving you the ability to monetise and become a much larger company on a global basis,” said Dave.

“Having more SaaS [software as a service] applications and more ecosystem simply isn’t enough. We as an organisation are committed to providing you with more, providing you with the right technologies and integrations into what you are asking for.”

Dave said the distributor was committed to bringing fresh vendors into the marketplace and cited its recent relationship with Salesforce as an example, but was also making it more straightforward for partners to have their own services made available.

“We will continue our commitment to providing you more, more innovation, more partnership and more experiences,” he said.