CRN Ingram Micro SI Issue#1414

BRIDGING THE GAP

Ingram Micro is helping partners deliver higher-margin services

FORGING TIES

Partners and new-to-the-channel vendors find win-win opportunities

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Gaining The Xvantage

Ingram Micro CEO Paul Bay says the company’s new digital experience platform will make it easier for partners to do business with the distributor and deliver the insight to propel their conversations with customers into the future.

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CONNECT WITH THE IMAGINATION OF TOMORROW

Letter From Paul Bay

Services Shift

Ingram Micro is helping partners make the transition to a services-led strategy, no matter how far along they are in their journey to deliver the right business outcome to their customers.

Gaining The Xvantage

Ingram Micro CEO Paul Bay says the company’s new digital experience platform will make it easier for partners to do business with the distributor and deliver the insight to propel their conversations with customers into the future.

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Ties That Bind

The Emerging Business Group connects partners with vendors that are new to the channel or to distribution, setting everyone up for success.

A Letter From Paul Bay

As the business behind the world’s brands, we’ve invested in ways that allow you to run your business better and grow your technology practices faster than any of us might have imagined. In fact, the growth we’ve all experienced over the last 40 years has allowed us to reach 90 percent of the world’s population with valuable solutions and a better customer experience for the businesses and people we collectively serve.

With an increasing demand for digital and more and more multivendor technology solutions in play, your role within the IT channel has never been more important. That’s why at Ingram Micro, we’re committed to investing in the value of the channel ecosystem and helping reduce the complexities in the way we all do business.

Over the last 18 months, we’ve added more business and technical talent to our team to help close the skill gaps throughout the industry and enable you to better anticipate the needs of the market and solve for business outcomes. We’ve also automated more of the way we work together, removing and addressing dependencies on manual processes and disconnected systems. And there’s more to come.

On behalf of the more than 29,000 Ingram Micro team members worldwide, I’m thrilled to introduce our digital twin, Ingram Micro Xvantage in the U.S., Germany and Canada, and soon in many more countries. Ingram Micro Xvantage is our new digital experience platform built to seamlessly connect you with the entire global technology ecosystem. With its launch, we are introducing a frictionless experience of doing business together, one that brings the best of the personalized B2C experience we all know and appreciate to the B2B model of technology distribution. We want to free up our collective talent so together we can find better, new and more intuitive ways to serve your customers and add value, using data and insights not easily actionable or available in the past.

Looking forward, you will continue to see us invest in developing our talent, our value-added capabilities, and technical and business solutions to support your success. Some great examples of these investments include our global Centers of Excellence, professional and cloud services, partner communities, and advanced and specialty solutions. We’re also focused on delivering critical services, such as technology lifecycle and IT asset disposition services that support the circular economy, as well as practices that enhance and expand our collective ESG initiatives and bring us closer to the corporations and communities where we work, live and play.

I’ve never been more excited about the future of Ingram Micro, our partnership with you and the growing and continued success of the channel. Thank you for your trust and the opportunity to earn your business every day.

Warmest regards, Paul Bay CEO Ingram Micro

Gaining The Xvantage

BY CJ FAIRFIELD

When Bruce Lach, president of Success Computer Consulting, looks at Ingram Micro, he sees a distribution partner that is helping him elevate the very nature of his business.

With Ingram Micro’s new Xvantage digital experience platform—the most ambitious development project the distributor has ever undertaken—the company is enabling Lach and thousands of solution providers like him with big data insight they can use to recommend new breakthrough solutions to customers.

“What I want to know is what’s going to happen in the future,” Lach said, speaking about the predictive analytics he expects to get from the new Xvantage platform, which launched in the U.S. and Germany on Sept. 7 and will be rolled out globally through early 2023. “That combination of the data and the visualizations is going to guide us so

we’ll spend more time solution-selling. … Once we have that insight, we can develop really good road maps for each and every client,” he said.

“We’re probably getting about $1 out of every $3 spent on technology with our own clients,” Lach added. With the insight from Xvantage, he thinks Success Computer Consulting, an MSP based in Golden Valley, Minn., can grab even more. “To have that insight and have that knowledge and then be able to plan for it, that’s absolutely powerful”

With the new platform—the result of 15 months of work and a $550 million investment just to lay the foundation— Ingram Micro seeks to give its solution providers and vendor partners a dramatic advantage in the market.

Through artificial intelligence and machine learning, Xvantage provides a personalized experience with

Ingram Micro CEO Paul Bay says the company’s new digital experience platform will make it easier for partners to do business with the distributor and deliver the insight to propel their conversations with customers into the future.

data insight tailored to each of Ingram Micro’s solution providers and their customers. That’s on top of the realtime transactional benefits such as up-to-the-minute order status, proactive renewal tracking, product and subscription billing, and customer service capabilities.

Lach, who beta-tested the Xvantage platform, said by merging transactions with data, Ingram Micro is bringing partners into the big data insight era.

“To be honest, the dirty little secret is a lot of MSPs really don’t know what their clients have,” Lach said. “It’s just hard. It’s hard to keep track of assets, and we’ve worked really hard to get that [information]. I like the insight portion of what I’ve seen [from Xvantage]”

Lach is not alone in his praise of the platform. Other Ingram Micro partners have also been wowed by the ability to leverage Xvantage’s big data insight to grow their business.

Mark Essayian, president of Lake Forest, Calif.-based MSP KME Systems, which already had four employees using Xvantage ahead of its official launch, said the new platform provides partners with a “crystal ball” for their existing clients and prospects. He said he will now be able to proactively see what kinds of products and services customers will need down the road.

With Xvantage, Essayian said, he also can back up his solution recommendations with data insight from Ingram Micro. If he can show a customer a road map of how it can double in size and how he’s going to support that, KME Systems is going to win with that customer, he said

Bottom line, said Essayian, is Xvantage is powering big financial gains for his business. “Ingram is no longer a website and a warehouse,” he said. “They’re actually helping me transact business faster. … I’m a big fan.”

Essayian also has been impressed by the everyday improvements that come from the new platform, like no longer having two separate bills from the distributor—one for cloud services and one for products. “That’s gone,” Essayian said. “What is happening is friction—primarily sales friction—is being reduced. When I can reduce sales friction, customers buy more and they buy faster and they buy from me. … Ingram gets that”

Essayian expects to be able to increase his customer base by as much as 20 percent to 30 percent as a result of the new sharper sales focus that Xvantage is providing his business.

Ingram Micro calls the Xvantage platform its digital twin, making it easier for partners and customers to do business with it.

“We’re going to consumerize distribution, remove a bunch of friction and accelerate value for our customers and our vendor partners,” said Ingram Micro CEO Paul Bay. “The net of it is we really want to make it easier to do business with us”

That goal means helping partners make the right product choices to deliver key business outcomes for customers.

There are “lots of different products and many different skill sets that [solution providers] have to ultimately focus on to deliver that end customer business outcome,” Bay said. “If we’re focusing on business outcomes, [you have to look at the] amount of effort partners have to go through to get the certifications with those solutions. If there are a half-dozen products that make up a solution, how do they go about that process? It’s all about being able to provide that at the right time—the right offering at the right level and the right pricing, and that’s going to help take that friction out. It’s going to allow them time to have a different and even further business conversation with the end user. It’s going to allow us to be, as we say, the business behind the world’s leading brands.”

Xvantage provides a single-pane-of-glass view that offers partners a next-generation digital platform to navigate the increasingly complex technology solution landscape, from on-premises and hybrid solutions with a wide array of device choices to the untold number of subscription- and consumption-based offerings. “There are so many ways for us to go about solving for a business outcome and us being able to allow that at the right time,” Bay said. “One of the biggest opportunities we have as an industry—and what we’re going to be able to do with the data and the insight—is help partners, with their end users, make real-time decisions.”

Xvantage is focused squarely on eliminating the “wasted energy” that is slowing down the IT ecosystem, said Bay. “We want to be able to take that headwind and turn it into a tailwind,” he said. “It’s [looking at] how we take and embrace digital and sharing best practices and lessons learned across the industry to be more efficient and effective. There’s a lot of energy that’s spent on [being] reactive, from an industry perspective, versus automating that, driving process improvement, driving operational excellence and freeing that up to be more proactive.”

Bay also sees the Xvantage platform unleashing a new wave of opportunity for partners building services capabilities around emerging technologies. In fact, he said, Xvantage is going to allow partners to leverage the full breadth and depth of Ingram Micro’s solution muscle. “[It’s about] where can they lean on us to provide and augment their solutions and offerings? Areas where we continue to invest are if they have solutions, more certifications, whether it’s around security, IoT, data center and what’s currently going on with 5G,” he said. “It’s really understanding where those opportunities are and then focusing and using Ingram Micro to bring everything together.”

Bay is urging both its solution provider customers and vendors to work with Ingram Micro to accelerate the Xvantage opportunity. “My ask of the channel, collectively of both the vendors and our customers, is how do we work together more quickly to accelerate the opportunities we have in front of us,” he said. “We still have a lot of reactive friction and manual processes in how we do business, and as we go to help our customers solve those end-business

AHEAD OF THE CURVEGAINING THE XVANTAGE

outcomes and solve for those challenges, we have to work together more quickly and at pace.”

Xvantage comes to market as the industry is moving quickly to adopt new technology to drive better business outcomes for customers, said Bay. “It’s an exciting place to be,” he said. “That’s why I love where I sit at Ingram Micro, because we sit right in the middle of this, and we have the opportunity to continue to add business value to both our customers and our vendors.”

Planning For Transformation

Sanjib Sahoo, executive vice president and chief digital officer at Ingram Micro, said the focus of the digital transformation journey has changed from automation to experience. “That’s a huge shift,” he said. And it’s all about the “why.”

“If you get the ‘why’ right, along with your employees, everybody will be much more participation-focused,” he

Xvantage is helping customers digitally transform, but it doesn’t come without investments, challenges and the need for manpower, according to Sahoo. “We on our own are working on a digital transformation issue that is pretty challenging,” he said. “It’s very large scale, in multiple countries around the world, and we are growing at a pretty fast speed.”

Sahoo implored partners to think creatively about using the Xvantage platform to drive business benefits for their customers.

“How do you create that spirit, that mindset change in customers and their organizations?” Sahoo asked. “How can you architect in such a way that you can perform as you transform? How do you communicate in a way that it creates excitement and also focus on value? ... Digital is not about IT or technology. It is more about people, it’s more about spirit. It’s more about solutions than technology.”

Why Xvantage Is A Game-Changer For Partners

Xvantage solves one of the perennial problems of distribution: efficient order tracking, said Kirk Robinson, executive vice president and president of North America at Ingram Micro.

“The thing that we’re building is something that the industry basically struggles with: tracking shipments,” he said. “What Sanjib has built with order status and tracking [capabilities] is using AI and ML to implement the vendor data.”

said. “Then after the why, you can follow with the ‘what’ and the ‘how,’ and then later you can do the ‘wow.’”

Xvantage is a business model transformation, “rather than an IT project,” he said.

Sahoo said the key to success for partners implementing Xvantage is to “perform while you transform.”

“You cannot stop your current business,” he said. “But how do you create a plan that really makes you incrementally transform as you’re performing? You have to make portions of your business incrementally transform as you’re building. … You will have many initiatives. Focus on value, focus on ROI and really focus on the customer. Once you do that ROI and the value and you measure it with data, then you will automatically show progress.”

The beauty of Xvantage is it is a self-learning, personalized platform, Sahoo said. “It looks at how you are interacting with the platform to drive an experience,” he said. “As you are doing it, it customizes, and it’s doing it for you so it makes it easier.”

The platform is bringing consumerization into distribution, Sahoo said, echoing Bay.

“We are used to consumerization in the B2C world,” he said. “We are bringing this kind of technology experience of B2C consumerization into distribution to make this experience much easier and more seamless.”

As an example, Robinson said Ingram Micro used to get “hundreds of thousands of calls” from solution provider partners asking where their product was and why it had yet to be delivered. The distributor has now tied a solution into Xvantage where customers can look up order status on their own.

Through the efficiencies of the platform, partners are also going to be able to look at their own team and see where time is being spent, said Robinson. “The way we look at it is when you do a time and motion study on where your employees or associates are spending [time], is it of value or non-value?” Robinson said. “Partners will be able to do that too when they come across the platform and see where things are more automated and simplified.”

Xvantage is going to “simplify the process for our customers,” Robinson said. “We believe that the better experience we drive and the more complexity we take out, the more we’re going to win from a competitive standpoint.”

Xvantage ultimately provides Ingram Micro with a huge competitive edge, said Robinson. “This is not easy. If it was, everybody would be doing it,” he said. “This is because every partner is different, and every partner has different capabilities [in terms of] what they can do when given data. … They want to look [to] us for where they are in their journey and how we can support them, whether that’s through data insight, creative financing or how to migrate data.”

‘We are used to consumerization in the B2C world. We are bringing this kind of technology experience of B2C consumerization into distribution to make this experience much easier and more seamless.’

SANJIB SAHOO, EVP, Chief Digital Officer, Ingram Micro

GAINING THE XVANTAGE

Partners Monetizing With Xvantage

James Rocker, founder and CEO of Bohemia, N.Y.-based MSP Nerds That Care, said Xvantage’s capabilities are going to help him drive revenue growth.

“It’s newer, faster, quicker when delivering the product or service to the customer,” he told CRN. “It’s faster than ever before, and it’s just going to drive more efficiency. That’s automatically going to drive higher revenues and the ability for us to take on more clientele. That, of course, gives us the ability to scale.”

Xvantage’s single pane of glass is key as MSPs have many tools to manage. “We’re not really looking for another tool,” he said. “This is going to replace what’s happening now at Ingram as well as other tools that we’re using to see the data.”

Rocker said Xvantage is a “next-level” platform that is going to empower MSPs like Nerds That Care to streamline operations across multiple technology partners.

“Ultimately, it’s going to build a lot more efficiency and clarity into our day-to-day operations,” he said. “This is pretty cutting-edge. There aren’t many distribution or manufacturer partners that have this available in this capacity to MSPs. I don’t think there’s anything that comes close to it. … There’s probably going to be a tremendous shift of business from competitors over to Ingram. For those who have left Ingram to go somewhere else, I’m sure they are going to regret it when they see this in the market.”

David DeCamillis, vice president of sales and marketing at Denver-based MSP Platte River Networks, is excited to see the impact Xvantage will have on his business. He expects Ingram Micro to “crush it” when it comes to business acceleration.

“I know they’ve been working hard in expanding their digital footprint, I know they’ve been working hard on making the online experience that much easier for partners like us, and I know they’ve invested a lot into it,” DeCamillis said. “There’s a lot of research, a lot of time, a lot of hours, a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of expertise.”

Xvantage also will help ensure the vendor community is getting matched with the right solution providers amid the fast-paced digital transformation that is reshaping the channel.

“When we look at Xvantage, it’s so different, such a different way of doing things,” Robinson said. “We understand there are roles that are yet to be defined to support our partners and our vendors. This is a [big new opportunity] for the vendor side in terms of the data that we’re going to be able to share with them.”

That’s why Xvantage is so transformative, Robinson said.

“It’s going to change us in ways we don’t [yet] know, [as well as] how we use data and virtual reality,” he said. “IoT will come into play in different ways from a solution standpoint, and we’re just excited about what all those opportunities are.”

Embracing The Digital

For partners, Xvantage represents the next big leap forward, said KME Systems’ Essayian. “Ingram is helping me reduce my internal costs and helping me go to a client where I can dothingssmarter,better,faster,”hesaid.Byreducinginternal costs, Essayian said he will be able to hunt for more new business.

“It’s going to enable me to go after more operationally mature clients,” he said. “Do we see growth? Absolutely. But it’s double growth. It’s additional dollars from existing clients,and it’s additional dollars from new clients that see we can do business better”

Ultimately, Xvantage reduces frustration across the board, said Essayian. “Reducing that frustration level is going to be huge for us because then my people are happier, customers are satisfied, my team is satisfied and Ingram is satisfied,” he said. “Everybody can then grow at different levels, faster”

Lach, meanwhile, sees the same big growth benefits from Xvantage. Success Computer Consulting will finish this year with $20 million in revenue, 80 percent from services and 20 percent from product sales.

“That’s about $4 million in product, that represents a third to 25 percent of what my clients spend,” he said. “If I can capture half of that, take another third, I can grow another $2 million in product, which is good.”

Lach sees the big data insight that comes from the platform powering Ingram Micro and its partners into the future. “This will allow Ingram Micro to serve more demand with less inventory,” he said. “They’ll have the types of data

not just that they have, but the types of data they’ll get from the channel, like us. If they can aggregate it, they’ll be able to have the right inventory at the right time in the right place.”

Bay, for his part, could not be more excited about how Xvantage is going to help both partners and vendors increase sales and profits. “We have over 40 years of data within Ingram Micro,” Bay said. “That data and how we use it with our business intelligence is a differentiator for us today. But I would tell you it’s going to be a game-changer for us tomorrow.”

AHEAD OF THE CURVEGAINING THE XVANTAGE

‘There aren’t many distribution or manufacturer partners that have this available in this capacity to MSPs. ... There’s probably going to be a tremendous shift of business from competitors over to Ingram. For those who have left Ingram to go somewhere else, I’m sure they are going to regret it when they see this in the market.’

JAMES ROCKER, Founder, CEO, Nerds That Care, on the Xvantage platform

Ingram Micro CEO Paul Bay: ‘Our People, Our Experience And Our Execution

BY CJ FAIRFIELD

With a $550 million investment to lay the foundation for the Xvantage digital experience platform, Ingram Micro is set to accelerate how it does business and bring more value to its partners.

Xvantage is a personalized platform that uses automation intelligence and machine learning to help partners perform a multitude of tasks for employees and customers, such as order and status tracking and customer service.

“It’s not like we’re just starting this journey,” said Ingram Micro CEO Paul Bay. “We made a real company investment both organically and through acquisition to set that foundation to help us accelerate what we’re going to do with Xvantage.”

Ingram Micro’s trove of customer data and how the distributor uses it is a “differentiator for us today,” he said.

“But I would tell you it’s going to be a game-changer for us tomorrow,” he said. “We’re here, and we’re that business behind the brand.”

Bay spoke with CRN for an exclusive interview to talk about the Xvantage platform, the supply chain, the distributor’s culture and more.

Edited excerpts of the conversation follow.

What are you most excited about when it comes to Xvantage?

This is one of the biggest opportunities we have at our company in creating a digital twin. We’re going to consumerize distribution, remove a bunch of friction and accelerate value for our customers and our vendor partners. The net of it is we really want to make it easier to do business with us.

There are three areas we want to focus on that start with our customer, what we’re doing internally and with our vendors. We’re enabling our team and customers to work faster, smarter and more collaboratively. We’re doing that at scale and around the world too. I think that’s an important element of what we’re doing. We’re able to do this on a global basis, so it’s not country-specific and we’re not trying to do it country by country.

How will Xvantage transform how partners do business and make money?

It’s being able to take the friction, manual processes and

the complexity of our industry out. If you’re a solution provider, the challenges that they have today … they have many different choices, lots of different products, many different skill sets that they have to ultimately focus on, and that end customer and business outcome. If we’re focusing on business outcomes, the amount of effort they have to go through to get the certifications with the solutions, there’s a half-dozen products that make up a solution, how do they go about that process? That’s being able to provide that at the right time, the right offering at the right level and the right pricing, and that’s going to help take that friction out. It’s going to allow them time to have a different and even further business conversation with the end user. It’s going to allow us to be, as we say, the business behind the world’s leading brands.

Why is digital experience transformation so important to Ingram Micro and its solution provider customers?

It goes back to how we’re going to serve our customers and the cost of service today in our industry, and being able to have that single pane of glass. I go back to the complexity of this industry: … There are so many ways for us to go about solving for a business outcome and us being able to allow that at the right time. One of the biggest opportunities we have as an industry—and what we’re going to be able to do with the data and the insight—is help partners with their end users make realtime decisions with the data.

What growth opportunities do you see for your SMB partners?

First is being able to add their services, so where they’re going to be specialized and where they’re going to add their services. Also, where can they lean on us to provide and augment their solutions and offerings? Areas where we continue to invest are if they have solutions, more certifications, whether it’s around security, IoT, data center and what’s currently going on with 5G. It’s really understanding where those opportunities are and then focusing and using Ingram Micro to bring everything together. I get asked all the time what I wish this industry and ecosystem would do, and I go back to [the idea that if] it takes many products to make up a business outcome

Are What Differentiate Us Today’

or solution then how do we make sure that we’re able to provide that service for them? They’ve got to be able to focus on partnering with each other and being able to provide that outcome. The focus is working partner to partner. Global is becoming more of an opportunity that we hear many of our solution providers of all sizes asking of us and the vendor community—to show up with a persistent and predictable model of how we can deliver on a global basis.

How have supply chain issues changed your partners’ behaviors?

The partner behaviors have been getting more narrow in terms of offerings and what they’re trying to solve for. It’s a cleaner supply chain even now with work-from-home and even from some of the higher-end, more technical products. The business is still challenged, whether it’s chips or whatnot, from a supply chain standpoint. Partners have gotten even more specific and laser-focused on taking that end-user opportunity and how that works back through Ingram Micro and ultimately out to the vendors. You may have a business outcome that takes seven, eight, 10 products to fulfi ll, and if you’re missing one or two products you have to sit and wait for those two remaining products. It’s about how do we help figure out what the technologies can be to offset that. It’s making sure that we have a much cleaner ecosystem than we’ve had probably a dozen years ago from an industry standpoint.

How would you describe Ingram Micro’s culture?

We’re a people-first culture. We start with the customer and work our way back in and make sure that we have the best talent. It’s still a relationship business that we’re in, so it’s about making sure we have the right people and the best talent, and that’s super important as a culture that’s led by the people, our customers and our vendors.

Susan O’Sullivan was recently promoted to vice president of DEI at Ingram Micro. Why is DEI so important to the company?

DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] is super important,

as is ESG [environmental, social and governance] from a company perspective. Having someone with the skill set and the experience of Susan that comes out of sales and has been with Ingram Micro for so long is important for us. We want to make sure we’ve got the right diversity throughout the industry and the company and are making sure we’re leading with what the opportunities are. We’re super excited that Susan took on this opportunity after wearing the sales hat and being the Buffalo, [N.Y], leader. What Susan has done for so many years—having that experience of making us a better company as we go out and recruit—has been awesome.

What do you think makes Ingram Micro better than its competitors?

Our people, our experience and our execution are what differentiate us today and why we lead in the industry. Ingram Micro is the business behind the brand of both the established, largest technology companies, whether it’s vendors or customers, and also emerging companies. We’ve brought to market many emerging companies on a global basis. We’re that business behind their brand. We stand behind them 100 percent. Together with our partners we’re reaching 90 percent of the global population, so it’s our reach in being able to help and invest in their future and the health of their business on a go-forward basis and being that indispensable business partner. Our reach is the broadest in our industry.

What will we see from Ingram Micro through the rest of the year and into 2023?

You’re going to see a huge eff ort in getting Xvantage launched at scale with our partners in many countries. It’s a global rollout that we’re doing. You’re going to see us continue to deliver a consistent experience for both our vendors and our customers in being that global leader. We’ll continue to focus on operational excellence and new business every single day and also on how we make sure we’re helping our partners capture this business value for all. We’re going to invest in the areas where our partners are looking for the help to supplement and augment business needs that are out there and do it at scale for them.

BY JOSEPH F. KOVAR

As the need for solution providers to build up a stronger services portfolio continues to rise, Ingram Micro is working to help partners make the transition in a variety of ways, regardless of how far along the path to a services-led strategy they are.

From selling and implementing services on their own to helping them team with other solution providers to fill in gaps in their offerings, solution providers can find the help they need from Ingram Micro to move toward higher-margin services, said Ingram Micro executives.

“We are talking with our partners about an overall shift to services in their business,” said John Dusett, executive director of the company’s U.S. cloud services. “And very often that’s why we’re using ‘Everything as a Service’ as we talk about this.”

It is critically important for Ingram Micro to be able to bring the right services to bear to help partners with their end-user customers, Dusett said.

“You’ll see that come across in partner to partner, which is connecting partners to have services capability, or bringing in third parties that we have relationships with, or even companies that over the years we’ve purchased that bring that service capability,” he said.

The move to embrace a wider range of services, and maybe Everything as a Service, is a journey in which many partners are just now taking their first steps, Dusett said. “Today we are actually bringing more partners into selling their first cloud solution than we were a year ago,” he said.

The next step is for partners to look at moving one of their core competencies to the cloud, Dusett said.

“We often find partners have a solution that they’re providing to end customers today that is their core competency, is what they’re great at, and help them realize that they can do that using a cloud platform, whether it’s a simple SaaS solution or whether it’s a backup solution,” he said.

It is easy to talk about Software as a Service, Platform as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service, but distribution brings it all together with all the other parts that go into a complete services offering, said Tim FitzGerald, vice president of global cloud channel technical and services at Ingram Micro.

“It is really anchored on delivering business outcomes

for line-of-business decision-makers,” FitzGerald said. “You begin to incorporate many other aspects of what’s involved in delivering that complete solution.”

Ingram Micro helps solution providers leave no opportunity behind, said Greg Henson, founder and chairman of the Henson Group, a Miami-based Microsoft cloud solution provider that generates nearly all of its revenue from services.

Henson Group employs about 200 people worldwide and depends on Ingram Micro to bring its services and those of other channel partners to bear when needed, Henson said.

“We’re transparent about it,” he said. “We tell customers about Ingram Micro and tell them it’s a multibillion-dollar company backing us up. And customers love it.”

The market, meanwhile, is challenged by an unprecedented talent shortage, both on the channel and the customer side, FitzGerald said. He cited a late 2021 survey from research fi rm Gartner that found that 64 percent of IT executives see the talent shortage as the most significant barrier to adopting emerging technologies. That, he said, leads end customers to increasingly employ outside parties to mitigate that shortage.

“But it’s not just an end-user challenge. … Partners want to have the capability and competency to span all the solution areas where their customers have need,” he said. “That means a high level of certifications in lots of different, important vendor lines, not just textbook smarts, but the practical application of that knowledge to deliver tangible business value.”

Between Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, there are maybe 600 different services available to customers, of which his team can cover 60 percent to 70 percent, Henson said.

“But in certain areas like IoT and blockchain that are not as commonly offered, it’s easier for us to bring in Ingram Micro,” he said. “They help fill those gaps for a lot of smaller to midsize partners. And if Ingram Micro’s pre- and postsales professional services teams don’t have the capabilities, Ingram Micro has a database of partners who do, all with Ingram’s stamp of approval.”

Tim FitzGerald

John Dusett

Henson said his company is planning to qualify for that database, called Ingram Micro Link, this year to provide support for other channel partners as well.

Sam Barhoumeh, founder and CEO of ReadyNetworks, a North Palm Beach, Fla.-based solution provider and tierone Gold-level Microsoft cloud solution provider, said that his company is a part of Ingram Micro Link, which enables partners to work with each other.

“I know what services Ingram has available,” Barhoumeh said. “So if there’s something I don’t have, I know where to go at Ingram Micro to get it. If there are three use cases a client needs and I can provide one, I’m not going to tell the client to look elsewhere. I know I can find the right partners with help from Ingram Micro.”

As a distributor, Ingram Micro plays a critical role in helping to raise partner competency levels with easier paths to gaining that knowledge via training and its sales and technical teams, FitzGerald said. “We’re delivering ‘Growth as a Service’ in a way,” he said.

For example, Dusett said, partners who don’t have a particular competency can lean on Ingram Micro to help build that competency or bring in third-party services to build and deploy solutions.

“How do you build a great migration practice to get to the cloud?” he said. “If [the partner has] it, we’re simply giving them advice on how to optimize it. If they don’t, we’re bringing those services to them, either Ingram ourselves or other third parties that we have behind them.”

The talent shortage is limiting partners’ ability to build many of the competencies they need in order to deliver more solutions as a service to their customers, FitzGerald said.

“We’re here to augment the partner’s capability to meet the needs of their clients,” he said. “And that means we do services delivery through partners out to their end customers.”

Dusett cited Ingram Micro’s Security Expert Program that helps partners really understand what a well-run cybersecurity practice looks like, with a focus on enabling their technical capabilities and their customer acquisition capabilities.

“We have a consultative engagement to understand how the partner does their security assessments today, ensuring that they’ve got a methodology,” he said. “And if they don’t, or if it’s not up to market requirements, we bring them our own security assessment services capability that they can bring right out to their end customers.”

Ingram Micro has a long line card of security services, including assessments in general infrastructure, application modernization, collaboration and work-anywhere, data and AI, security and business applications that often span multiple hyperscalers, FitzGerald said.

“The Security Expert Program was an investment we made because we wanted to approach the partner in a way that they got to deliver a full business outcome for the customer, not just the service,” Dusett said. “We’re not just trying to sell penetration testing. We’re trying to help them solve a business outcome for an end customer.”

There are other barriers for partners looking to stand up a security service in addition to the talent shortage, including the investment needed to set up the right sales and marketing capabilities, Dusett said.

“It’s difficult in a services business. … So we’ve been very laser-focused on where can we make investments in sales and marketing, in vendor programs, in technical certifications, etc.,” he said. “All of those things are ways that we’re trying to lower the barrier for a partner to be able to take off in their business. [And] we’ve even gotten into creative financing solutions for services partners who may not realize how much cash they need to get their services business up and going.”

Ingram Micro is also helping partners provide services to federal government customers, said Tony Celeste, executive director and general manager of public sector for the distributor.

“Cloud adoption has helped generate interest in the move and the shift—even on software—from perpetual licensing to subscription,” Celeste said. “It’s far easier in [government] budget environments when dealing with annual budgets to take advantage of this stuff.”

Public sector services, a fast-growing business for Ingram Micro, is complicated by the fact that 80 percent of typical government spending on an annual basis goes toward sustaining existing infrastructure, Celeste said. The federal government also suffers from a talent shortage caused in part by a lot of experienced personnel retiring during the pandemic, he said.

“So now you’re dealing with a very limited budget for any new initiatives,” he said. “And, as you can imagine, in the government space going through that capital acquisition process for solutions is incredibly complicated. [And so] partners are looking for those solutions from us.”

Ingram Micro is providing financial solutions that aggregate multiple technologies and services for public sector customers, from simple traditional leasing to full utility consumption models, Celeste said.

“We’re providing that aggregation and those financial solutions to the partner [and] simplifying that for them in tailored financial solutions as a service,” he said.

IT services are very different when it comes to public sector versus commercial customers, said Kush Kumar, CRO of Red River, a Claremont, N.H.-based solution provider and MSP.

Commercial customers prefer managed services so they can stay out of the business of IT, Kumar said.

“In the public sector, however, customers want to own the services,” he said. “They want things as a service where they’re paying by the drink. So we own the assets for government clients and provide them a capability in a utility model. You can’t call it managed services.”

Working with the government is more of an outcome-based business with technology provided as a service, Kumar said.

Red River works with Ingram Micro to provide those services, along with architecture support, delivery support and logistics that let the solution provider provide best-ofbreed technologies, Kumar said.

“When we offer as a service, the customer doesn’t care if, say, the networking is based on Cisco or Juniper or Aruba,” he said. “They care about the capabilities. This allows us to provide the best infrastructure with CoTS [commercial off-the-shelf] integration. I tell the OEMs it’s their job to make the best technology in the world and our job to make it work.”

Tony Celeste Executive Director, GM, Public Sector

Community Spirit: Partner Collaboration Is Key

BY JOSEPH F. KOVAR

focused on midmarket and enterprise customers, he said.

Members of both communities get together to talk about ideas and business practices, as well as support their peers’ customers, Gottesmann said. The Trust X Alliance goes deeper with its Mastermind program, where partners meet in small groups behind closed doors to share everything there is to know about their business, he said.

The spirit of both communities comes from partner collaboration, Gottesmann said. For instance, a partner with a certain specialization can support a peer who needs specific help, he said. But despite helping each other with customer opportunities, there have been no cases where one partner took advantage of that collaboration to steal a customer, Gottesmann said.

“There’s a code of ethics,” he said. “There’s a process. There are a lot of safeguards and guardrails that make certain it doesn’t happen.”

Members are expected to provide active information, feedback, experience and insight to their community peers, Gottesmann said.

“Our first criteria when we’re looking at both communities is are these individuals that want to give back to other members, to other people, to other business owners, to other technologists to make certain that they teach what they’ve learned and learn what other folks are ready to teach,” he said.

As solution providers grapple to come to terms with the “new channel normal” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, some Ingram Micro partners are turning to the distributor’s community groups for guidance from their peers.

Discussions about post-COVID workplace culture will be front and center at upcoming events, said Darren Gottesmann, executive director of SMB sales and partner communities.

“How to manage new employees, how to manage the expectations of someone coming into the workforce today when all they know is a post-COVID world or a virtual or hybrid world, these are new conversations for someone who’s been in business for 30 years,” he said. “So now the folks that have the most experience in some cases have the least experience.”

Ingram Micro’s SMB Alliance and Trust X Alliance in June held their first in-person meetings since the start of the pandemic, Gottesmann said.

Both communities are now discussing post-COVID activities and plan to hold in-person meetings at upcoming Ingram Micro events, including Ingram Micro ONE this November in Orlando, Fla., and Ingram Micro Cloud Summit next May in Las Vegas. The communities will also hold virtual conversations, he said.

The SMB Alliance is a U.S.-based community of 300 partners, vendors and Ingram Micro employees focused on SMB customers, Gottesmann said.

The Trust X Alliance, meanwhile, brings together over 200 U.S. and almost 100 Canadian solution providers

Philanthropy is also important to the communities. The SMB Alliance, for instance, is a big supporter of Kaely’s Kindness Foundation, which was started by an Ingram Micro associate who as a young girl was diagnosed with cancer but found support with the help of another young girl in the same situation, said Kelly Sander, director of Ingram Micro’s SMB sales.

“She was able to fi nd a friend that had gone through it, [could] share the experience with,” Sander said. “And through that friendship she has beaten her cancer.”

Peer support is a key reason why SCO Cloud is a member of the SMB Alliance, said Deepak Thadani, president and CEO of the Armonk, N.Y.-based MSP.

“When I talk with other community members, we really get to know them and what they do,” Thadani said. “If I need help in Indiana or California, I know who to call. And if a partner doesn’t know who to call, they can reach out to Ingram Micro, who will reach out to the community. I feel sorry for partners not in the SMB Alliance. They are missing out on some really valuable intel.”

Devaughn Bittle, vice president of SMB Alliance member CommPutercations, said the Frederick, Md.-based MSP finds a lot of opportunity to collaborate with peers and share information.

“We’re always talking issues,” he said. “‘Have you heard this? Have you seen that?’ We put a lot of value on those conversations.”

Hans Mize, president of Data41, an Irvine, Calif.-based MSP, said as a member of the Trust X Alliance he has found a lot of value with his Mastermind group, which includes nine members, mainly solution provider CEOs and founders.

“We share ideas and business plans,” he said. “We can talk with others who have similar experiences.” 

Kelly Sander Director, SMB Sales

Darren Gottesmann Executive Director, SMB Sales, Partner Communities

THREAT PROTECTION WHERE YOU NEED IT MOST— EVERYWHERE.

Sanjib Sahoo On Digital Operations Vs. Digital And The Power Of The Xvantage Platform

BY CJ FAIRFIELD

Sanjib Sahoo, executive vice president and chief digital officer at Ingram Micro, talks about the importance of digital operations and how the new Xvantage platform will “create a completely new experience” for partners to do business with the distributor.

“What has happened is that digital has changed from automation to experience,” Sahoo said in an interview with CRN. “Today, we start with experience. We start with how should the experience be for our customers, our partners, our employees and then we drive automation in the back end. When you work from an experience-driven model, you have to focus on digital operations.”

Sahoo also discussed the difference between digital transformation and digital operations, keeping the focus on value and value creation and what the secret is to success.

What’s the importance of digital operations and why should partners lean into it?

If you look at digital transformation, the term I think has been a little outdated because we have been transforming for a long time. Transformation will always happen as technology matures. As the digital technology matures, we will keep on transforming. I think what is important is more than 84 percent of the digital transformations fail to deliver the value that they started with. What is important is we have to keep a focus on value and value creation. As these digital technologies are evolving, the ability to create a digital operating model to truly create business value for your customers, employees and partners is the most important thing. By ‘value’ I mean really improving customer satisfaction, improving the partner experience and tangible business value. That’s why the digital operation is so important right now.

Before, it was innovation first and then adoption. You first transform technology and then you try for adoption. That model does not work anymore. What works is you constantly create a digital operating model, which creates more of a digital-platform-led business model and, as your technology matures, you actually keep on refi ning the model and drive value.

What’s the difference between digital operations and digital transformation?

Digital transformation is more of a journey. For example, a company can do a digital transformation by changing a program. Most of the organizations think digital transformation is automation. You automate from paper to digital. But right now, what has happened is that digital has changed from automation to experience. Today, we start with experience. We start with how should the experience be for our customers, our partners, our employees and then we drive automation in the back end. When you work from an experience-driven model you have to focus on digital operations. The focus on improving the experience doesn’t stop—because experience equals value. The focus on taking complexity out of the business model sometimes creates new business models by virtue of digital technology. So while digital transformation is viewed as a project, digital operations is more of a DNA and a spirit that is ongoing.

Why should partners care about digital transformation and digital operations?

The partner should care about this because as they are having discussions with their customers, that discussion should start with selling solutions, not selling technology, because our partners are trying to solve problems for their customers. If we take it a layer above and become a true partner in solutions and really help organizations to digitally transform by giving them solutions, then our discussion starts from what business problems they are trying to solve. Digital transformation is actually solving the business problem and value. If we start thinking of those concepts and thinking digital transformation is more about spirit and solutions and how do we solve the problem, not the technology, then our discussions with the partners will be different.

Why do many companies fail at digital transformation, and what is the secret to success?

The No. 1 thing is the spirit and the mindset. The biggest reason companies fail is because of the company [itself].

Transformation, The Secret To Success

Sanjib Sahoo EVP, Chief Digital Officer

Many times companies focus on that 40 percent chance of failure versus that 60 percent chance of success. If you’re used to doing something in a [certain] way for many, many years, then change is hard. The second reason is that [putting] innovation or transformation first, like a technology project, and then adoption second doesn’t work anymore. Why? Because the world has changed, the pace has changed. Companies are transforming, and digital journeys have changed from automation to experience.

What is the business value around Xvantage for Ingram Micro and its partners?

Xvantage is a digital twin of Ingram Micro. What we mean by that is we are actually creating a completely new experience for our employees and for our partners to actually do business with us. It’s a new way of doing business with Ingram Micro. It’s a different experience. It takes complexity out. It actually uses machine learning and AI to push insight, recommendations and personalize the experience either for our vendor partners or our customer partners. It personalizes the experience based on their needs. It’s a self-learning platform, which actually learns as you interact. So as you’re interacting, it really creates a differentiating experience, which means that it aims to make, in the distribution industry, the buying of technology easy. It combines hardware, software, cloud consumption models, Everything-as-a-Service models, everything under the same ecosystem. It creates a single pane of glass for our customers. By using digital technologies it [creates] that frictionless experience for our partners and makes technology buying easy. It actually helps you with algorithms to create that bundled solution in a single pane, taking all the complexity and legacy out from the back end.

How can Xvantage turn into revenue growth for your partners?

They can really get insight, which is fruitful for their business. They can use the recommendations, which understand their DNA. Instead of searching all solutions,

we can push the solutions for them, which makes it easy. It can take a lot of mundane work that they do out of their books so that they can focus on [building solutions] and they’re not figuring out basic stuff. It’s like taking the whole manual effort out. With automating all of that, the partners can focus on really [building solutions] with their customers and having productive conversations with the insight that Xvantage is giving. This actually makes them a solution provider to their customers by helping them grow their business with the power of the platform and data insight that we’re giving them.

How will Xvantage impact the experience your partners and providers have with Ingram Micro?

Xvantage actually creates a completely new experience layer. It’s more of an experience-driven organization that you want to become. And it ties all the experiences together by virtue of our data. We have worked really hard on taking the data and creating architecture that synchronizes all these experiences in such a way that the employee experience, the partner experience, the vendor experience is all synchronized together. For the partner, they can get a truly personalized experience, they can get insight, and the complexity is [gone]. Same thing for employees, they can actually get a single pane of glass for everything from a customer profile. They can actually look at all the data in one single cockpit. They can also go browse our partners’ information and screens together. For example, let’s say a coding customer starts the code and drops off immediately, employees can pick up so it actually improves the way employees can operate.

For vendors it’s giving them that data back, that insight back. It’s making it easy for them to integrate with Ingram Micro and understanding what are their product demands, making all the rebates and all of the incentives easily synchronized with other parts of the system. It’s helping them to create those as-a-service models that we are working on. It’s really creating an experience that they can view in the platform and personalize for them. A hardware vendor may not have the same experience as a software vendor. It’s totally customized for them.

Kirk Robinson

EVP, President, North America

5 Ways Ingram Micro Is Upping Its Game For Partners

BY CJ FAIRFIELD

Kirk Robinson, Ingram Micro’s executive vice president and president of North America, outlined five ways the distributor is putting partners in a better position to grow their business, including Xvantage, a new digital twin platform aimed at improving the learning, partnering and buying experience for partners.

Through automation intelligence and machine learning, Xvantage users can perform a multitude of tasks for their employees and customers such as order and status tracking and customer service as well as get insight and recommendations.

“We cannot continue to do things we did yesterday. You look at what’s working and you continue to build upon it. You have to be brave enough to go do things like this platform. This is not easy, it’s not inexpensive, but we are all in,” he said.

Robinson also talked about bringing in the right talent to help with cloud and data migration and the distributor’s efforts to help partners with financing.

1. Xvantage Platform Is A ‘Game-Changer’

Sanjib [Sahoo, executive vice president and chief digital offi cer] comes in with proven capability of having [built digital platforms] before and he explained, ‘Here’s what this [Xvantage] platform looks like and can do,’ and I said, ‘I want in on it.’ Sanjib has been on board about a year and he’s proving himself every day with the talent he’s brought and the capabilities around the platform. I get more excited every day as we bring more partners on and get more feedback. This is a game-changer.

2. Data Insight Eliminates Complexity

One of the most exciting things we’re doing now is around data and looking at how we can take data insight and work with partners to help them grow their business. Everything we’re doing is about the customer experience and how do we take the complexity out of the business. We have years worth of experience working with business intelligence and data. Now we’re sitting down across the table and talking to [partners] about a particular end user and helping them understand the type of technology that end user is using and how they can change their story to help them be compliant and more secure. So it’s really exciting with Xvantage. This is going to allow us to scale that.

3. AI And ML Are Built Into The Xvantage Platform

We are working on how to simplify and once again take the complexity out of the business. With this, there’s a lot of automation. The other thing that we’re building into [the Xvantage platform] is something that the industry basically struggles with: tracking shipments. What Sanjib has built with order status and tracking [capabilities] is using AI and ML to implement the vendor data. We’re dependent upon the vendor data when it’s coming from them, either shipping into our warehouses or shipping direct to an end user or partner. By using AI we’re able to get more intelligent.

4. Focusing On Bringing In ‘The Right Talent’

Our customers need help with cloud migration and data migration, and CloudLogic [the cloud data center consulting company Ingram Micro acquired in 2021] fits right into the cloud team and everything we’re doing to support our customers in that journey. We’re bringing Paul Hager [vice president of services for the U.S.] on because of his experience. He’s been in the shoes of our partners, he knows how to grow business and he knows the pain points of the services world. What we’re doing now is looking at how do we grow organically by bringing in the right talent. I can tell you we’re always acquisitive, and I look at different companies almost on a monthly basis. But in the services world, you get a lot of them that would have us competing with partners, and that’s not something we’re going to do. We’re here to support the partner. Right now we’re looking more into bringing in the right talent.

5. Supporting Partners With Financing

‘Get comfortable with being uncomfortable’—I heard that quote from someone else but it’s a popular phrase. You can’t grow if you’re comfortable. You have to get uncomfortable. You have to strain and learn more and put yourself in situations where you’re going to grow. So how we relate that is looking at all the areas where our partners need support. Another big area that we work with our partners on is creative financing. It’d be very easy for us to just give them a credit line and extend it when they have a deal and say, ‘OK, now we’re good to go.’ We’re now having conversations with customers about financing that truly helped them grow their business, not just a deal.

Ingram Micro’s Marketing Message To Partners: Embrace Your Brand

BY CJ FAIRFIELD

BY C.J. FAIRFIELD

Prior to the pandemic, the majority of Ingram Micro’s marketing efforts were focused on the tools and technologies a partner can offer. Since then, however, the distributor has found these efforts—and the message being portrayed—have been flipped on their head. Today it’s all about the customer experience and the importance of a partner’s brand behind the business.

“What we’re seeing is our partners embracing their brand and what they represent and who they are as a company,” said Jennifer Anaya, senior vice president of global marketing at Ingram Micro. “You can replicate a lot of things in terms of skills or systems or tools that you use. But you really can’t replicate who you have on your team that has the expertise and the relationships and the knowledge that they bring.”

In addition, before the pandemic partners almost solely relied on in-person events to get in front of their distributor, vendors and even end customers, said Dennis Crupi, vice president of marketing at Ingram Micro.

“When the pandemic took all that away we all had to learn how to keep those points of connectivity alive and frequent through virtual experiences,” he said.

Ingram Micro, meanwhile, did some internal research and found that on average it provided at least six different products that make up a partner’s solution.

“Historically our partners were pretty focused on a smaller group of vendors. If Ingram on average is delivering six different products as part of a solution, that means those partners are having to have relationships with a lot of different manufacturers,” Anaya said. “Ingram is that consolidating point aggregating all that together.”

Partners today also are marketing the solution and not the vendors whose products make up that solution, she said.

“What those partners are providing is the expertise on how that solution works,” Anaya said.

“The outcome of what that solution should be doing for the business that it’s being implemented into is an entirely different go-to-market approach and message than our partners have historically had,” she said.

Partners are also adopting a customer experience model to wrap around their go-to-market efforts when marketing their technologies. Partners that are able to define their stack and their process to focus more attention on ensuring a great customer experience are the ones seeing success, according to Crupi.

Because many solution providers are technologists, they “get really wrapped around tools,” Anaya added. That message has changed to get away from the understanding of the tools to focus more on the content.

“The tools are important because you need standardized tools connected so that you can understand what your customers are connecting with, whether it’s your website or social media handles,” she said. “That’s going to start to improve that customer experience and allow you to have that 180-degree view of how you’re marketing and what that does to back into how you’re selling and how you’re delivering.”

She added that partners want to engage and now use those tools to be smarter.

“We partner with a couple of outside companies and use their marketing automation platform to develop content that the partners can easily, at the click of a button, rebrand into their own brand, look and feel,” Crupi said.

James Rocker, CEO of Bohemia, N.Y.-based MSP Nerds That Care, likes that Ingram Micro’s marketing services address partners of all types.

“Everybody needs something sort of different so they provide a wide variety of services,” he said. “They’ve partnered with industry leaders and people who they found would be a really good fit for the partner community. That’s what I found to be most advantageous for my business.”

He said it’s also helpful to listen and learn about what others are doing to help their own business “walk the walk.”

“You’re not making that leap of faith by yourself,” he said. “You’re talking to others who have done that process before so you can really learn from all of the aspects that they have.”

Jennifer Anaya SVP, Global Marketing

Dennis Crupi VP, Marketing

SHOWCASING EXPERTISE

Finding The Best Fit: The Emerging Business Partners And New-To-The-Channel Vendors

BY JOSEPH F. KOVAR

When vendors take their first steps into distribution, one place they turn to is the Emerging Business Group, part of the Advanced Solutions Division at Ingram Micro.

The Emerging Business Group is itself an emerging part of Ingram Micro, having been formed about two years ago on the foundation of two separate businesses that were heavily focused on new and emerging vendors and technologies, including Promark, a value-added distributor it acquired in 2012.

Donald Scott, director of the Emerging Business Group, said his focus is mainly on vendors of cybersecurity, data center, automation and digital transformation technologies. The group has a team of about 60 who work with other Ingram Micro employees who provide technical and marketing support.

Despite the group’s name it is not focused on emerging vendors. Instead, Scott said, it is focused on established vendors that are new to distribution or to the channel, or those that are looking for additional support to reach partners.

“We provide them with dedicated management, a main person that owns the relationship with the vendors, along with field business development resources, inside folks that do the same types of roles, field marketing and inside transactional support as well,” he said. “So we’re built essentially to provide the best possible experience for new vendors coming into distribution or Ingram Micro specifically and provide them with best practices to help them engage efficiently with our sales teams and navigate to the best partner fits.”

For channel partners, the Emerging Business Group brings a number of benefits, said James Range, president, CEO and owner of White Rock Security, a Dallas-based security-focused solution provider.

Range said he knows that these vendors, including a few security companies he partners with such as Adlumin, Bitdefender and Arctic Wolf Networks, have likely already been successful in the market but are either new to the channel or new to distribution.

“With Ingram Micro [Emerging Business Group], these companies are brought to the forefront,” he said. “[The group] has only about 20 to 30 products, rather than thousands from Ingram Micro as a whole.”

Ingram Micro has the resources to bring these companies to channel partners and does the vetting they need before signing on with them, Range said.

“Ingram Micro offers additional training on them, along with sales engineers who provide additional support at the drop of a hat to make working with them more seamless,” he said.

Andy Whiteside, founder and CEO of XenTegra, a

Huntersville, N.C.-based digital workspace and virtual desktop infrastructure solution provider, said his company likes working with the Emerging Business Group because it facilitates connections with vendors that might otherwise get lost in a distributor’s large line card.

“These are technologies we want to market, sell, enable and do services with,” Whiteside said. “Ingram Micro’s [Emerging Business Group] helps us scale with these companies without our having to figure out where to start transacting. It’s a part of the Ingram Micro portfolio that allows us to get started quickly.”

The Emerging Business Group helps vendors provide the necessary enablement to partners and connects them with solution providers they otherwise would not have found, Whiteside said.

Working with the Emerging Business Group is a two-way street, he said. “Ingram Micro is bringing vendors [that are new to them] to us,” he said. “It’s highly likely they’re ready to transact. Or, if we ask for something not on their line card, they often bring [it] to us quickly.”

The Emerging Business Group serves a very important purpose for vendors looking to build their channel base, Scott said.

Generally speaking, smaller and newer vendors don’t have the funds to invest in an expensive support model through distribution, compared with large tier-one vendors that generally invest quite a bit through their distribution partners for things like business development or market development, sales overlays, transactional support and so on, a lot of which is vendor-funded, he said.

“Smaller vendors, especially those that are still venturefunded or pre-IPO, are a little bit more cognizant of their burn rates and less inclined to invest in those types of resources, especially when they’re not sure about how to work through distribution,” he said. “So the fact that Ingram Micro invests in these resources and pays for those resources once we’re successful in selling the vendor solutions is valuable to them. It helps them free up capital to focus on other things like product development.”

The Emerging Business Group generally brings from three to six new vendors to its channel partners every quarter, Scott said. Cloud data management company Rubrik, for instance, has technically been part of the Emerging Business Group for about four years and is the largest vendor still working with the organization, he said.

Yubico, which develops hardware authentication security keys, is working with the group to make Ingram Micro its first

Group Forges Ties Between

go-to-market move through a large distributor, he said.

Those vendors are typically supported by the program for about four years, although they may stay longer, Scott said.

“Provided that we both feel good about the direction that our partnership is going, we’ll maintain support for that vendor somewhere in the neighborhood of four years,” he said. [Rubrik has] evolved quite a bit, and they’re going through a lot of changes. ... We’ve already had conversations about what’s the next step in terms of positioning them within one of our other vendor business units, whether it’s our data center practice, security group, or another.”

Solution providers that reach out to the Emerging Business Group will find that Ingram Micro has made it easy to start relationships with vendors new to the channel and likely don’t have a lot of money to spend on building the channel, Scott said.

“Generally speaking, a lot of them might have a channel organization of five or six people,” he said. “So what we’re doing to help the vendor is also helping the partner in terms of acting almost like a sales force multiplier.”

Ingram Micro provides field support and sales support, including getting its own people certified with the vendor, to be able to sit down with partners and talk intelligently about the vendor’s technology and how to engage the technical resources from the distributor or the vendor as well as learn what it takes to be authorized or certified, Scott said.

“[Solution providers] have a single team in Ingram Micro that can bring you into different small vendors to help you understand what it takes to be successful and help make an educated decision on whether it’s the right fit for your business,” he said. “Our team doesn’t just bring a vendor in and then run out and talk to all our partners at once about the vendor. We sit down and talk about where the technology plays from an end user’s viewpoint.”

This includes looking at specific vertical focuses, how the technology fits with certain market segments, such as SMB, and which partners are focused on that market segment or vertical, Scott said.

“So we’re going to help the vendor understand where they fit from a partner standpoint,” he said. “And then we’re going to go to those partners that we see through our data as being the best fit for the vendor. So we’re hopefully shortening the recruitment cycle for both sides. The vendors are going to spend less time talking to folks that aren’t a fit, and the partners can be assured that we’ve looked at their businesses and determined that this technology fits their strategy.”

Who’s In The Emerging Business Group?

These are some of the vendors developing their channel business via Ingram Micro’s Emerging Business Group:

• Adlumin, a Washington, D.C.-based managed detection and response technology developer founded in 2016

• AppViewX, a Seattle-based developer of automation and orchestration technology for network infrastructure and public key infrastructure, founded in 2017 when it was spun out of Payoda

• Arctic Wolf Networks , an Eden Prairie, Minn.based managed detection and response technology developer founded in 2012

• Bitdefender , a Bucharest, Romania-based cybersecurity company founded in 2001

• NetAlly, a Colorado Springs, Colo.-based developer of networking testing and Wi-Fi analysis technology founded in 1993 and spun out of Netscout as an independent company in 2019

• Rubrik, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based cloud data management and data security technology developer founded in 2014

• Skyhigh Security, a San Jose, Calif.-based developer of cybersecurity technology, formerly known as McAfee Enterprise

• Yubico, a Stockholm, Sweden-based developer of hardware authentication security keys founded in 2007

Scott said he encourages partners to check in with the Emerging Business Group often because it is continually engaging with partners to learn what gaps they see in their offerings, what kinds of technologies they are interested in and what vendors they may have heard of that Ingram Micro has yet to carry.

“That type of feedback is extremely vital to us,” he said. “A partner telling me, ‘This vendor is really doing great things in the channel’ is candidly the best kind of feedback I can get. I’d rather hear that from a channel partner than I would from somebody at Gartner or IDC or Forrester.”

Donald Scott

Director, Emerging Business Group

Ingram Micro’s Asset Disposition Services Help

Partners Take Out The Recycling

BY CJ FAIRFIELD

As data security is of the utmost importance to any partner, Ingram Micro wants to make sure that data is secure when an electronic device is at the end of its life cycle.

“The number of devices in today’s world that capture and store data is like never before, and that’s not going to slow down anytime soon,” said Todd Zegers, global vice president of IT asset disposition and reverse logistics at Ingram Micro. “Using a reputable partner to do this type of work where we’re going to scrub everything, we’re going to capture everything and we’re going to erase everything and certify or physically destroy it, it’s probably more important than ever before.”

With its IT asset disposition offering, Ingram Micro offers cradle-to-grave services for its partners and their end customers to make sure no data gets leaked when their devices are recycled.

And Ingram Micro is starting to see more and more partners come to the distributor because they don’t have the operations to perform such services in-house.

“They don’t have trucks, they don’t have the processing equipment, they don’t have the capability to do refurbishing and remanufacturing and reselling those devices,” Zegers said. “We’re really plugging in nicely as an endto-end distributor for these partners who don’t have the capabilities.”

But first, it starts with security.

“That’s actually fi rst and foremost,” he said. “Making sure when a client is disposing of equipment, whether the data is erased or shredded on-site by one of our shredding machines, that’s really important. But [so is]capturing serial numbers of data-bearing devices on-site.”

This is key so that when materials arrive back at the warehouse they’re rescanned and verifi ed to make sure nothing was lost or stolen during transit.

Another benefit is the remarketing value. Zegers said 65 percent of what is brought in is refurbished and resold to secondary markets. A portion of those proceeds go back to the customer to offset fees for the services.

The third benefit is e-cycling.

“We have to track [items] all the way back into the manufacturing stream,” he said. “We could tell a customer at any point in time where the plastic from their materials went.”

Ingram Micro has a large footprint when it comes to IT asset disposition. If a customer is in a country where Ingram Micro doesn’t have a presence, it will set up best-in-class partners for that customer, he said.

Adam Kaye, senior program manager of asset recovery at Somerset, N.J.-based solution provider SHI International, said the appeal of Ingram Micro and its asset disposition services is its global presence.

“It’s being able to offer our customers a one-stop shop, whether they have a location in California, New Jersey, Australia or Japan,” he said.

Ingram Micro’s remarketing network is also beneficial to SHI as is the number of different sales channels it uses to maximize the reselling of the equipment, according to Kaye.

Using the services has an economic impact on partners as well. For SHI, it’s a unique service that it can offer to customers.

“It’s as simple as any hardware customer of SHI’s,” he said. “It gives us an easy follow-up question of, ‘What are you replacing? What are you doing with the old stuff?’ So it’s only a positive program financially.”

Jason Taylor, president of Cleveland-based MSP MCPc, said the company is also harnessing a holistic life-cycle management approach to recycling IT assets from cradle to grave.

“We wanted to be able to do the recycling ourselves. Ingram, specifically Todd [Zegers], was very open-minded to us creating a franchise-like relationship with them where it’s MCPc-based employees but we’re using Ingram’s software platform and process,” he said. “When it’s a local customer [their electronics] go to an MCPc facility and we do everything cradle to grave.”

Todd Zegers Global VP, IT Asset Disposition, Reverse Logistics

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BY JOSEPH F. KOVAR

As business IT requirements have shifted over time from straight hardware sales at fixed credit terms to SaaS and managed services, Ingram Micro has moved to provide partners with the financial tools to address the change.

Anthony Mackle, Ingram Micro’s senior vice president and CFO for the U.S. and Latin America, said it has been difficult for many partners to shift from 30-day or 60-day terms to charging monthly service fees. And this has created an opportunity for the distributor to explore ways to finance partners’ business instead of just transactions.

“We provide that cash flow to not only fuel your growth but also quite frankly get you through to the break-even point,” Mackle said. “And what we found out was on either a 36-month annuity or SaaS, month 23 was your breakeven point. That’s where your cash flow starts covering the investment out of your pocket because you have to hire the head count and buy the software and hardware yourself.”

The move toward managed services and the cloud has required new financing tools for partners, Mackle said.

“That evolved from just financing contracts and the cash flow cycle to also funding partner acquisitions of other partners. … We started to step in to support their acquisition strategies,” he said.

That’s the kind of support solution providers said they have seen from Ingram Micro.

Scott Lennon, president of Total Communications, a Hartford, Conn.-based solution provider that in December Lennon acquired from its former owner, Frontier Communications, said support from Ingram Micro was essential to his ability to take the company independent.

“Ingram Micro knows our run rate, they know us, and they understand the challenges of a small business,” Lennon said. “So they came up with programs to help ensure we succeed.”

That included providing a term loan to help Lennon acquire the company as well as a good line of credit to help the business grow.

“Ingram Micro gave us the runway and the term loan,” he said. “We’re also looking to leverage Ingram Micro for future acquisitions.”

John Santoru, president, CEO and new owner of Albuquerque, N.M.-based Holmans USA, said he acquired the U.S. Department of Energy-focused solution provider this past April with creative financing from Ingram Micro.

The distributor also helped with strategic inventory, a key requirement with certain government customers, Santoru said.

“Ingram Micro financed not only what we owed them, but the backlog as well. … Ingram Micro understands my customer base and knows that federal customers place large orders from $500,000 to $3 million,” he said. “We can really sweat the payables. But Ingram has always worked well with that.”

Ingram Micro has a strategy called “Get To Yes,” Mackle said.

“With ‘Get To Yes,’ it doesn’t matter whether you’re using traditional credit, traditional financing or financing the partner,” he said. “It is how we can help you finance your business, the deal and fuel growth.”

The strategy means Ingram Micro can’t just publish a booklet laying out financial options, Mackle said.

“The reality is, as soon as I hear something different, I’m going to create something else,” he said. “And in a lot of cases, our financing is literally tailored to what our partners are trying to do and where they’re trying to get to.”

This is completely different thinking from how a bank provides financing, said Melanie DelValle, Ingram Micro’s director of customer finance.

“Think of somebody buying heavy equipment and a bulldozer costs $1 million,” she said. “Banks understand that type of financing because they understand the collateral. What Ingram understands is the MSP business and the channel. We leverage that understanding to create unique financing offerings based on the structure of that business.”

Looking ahead, Ingram Micro’s financial services will be increasingly tied to the new Ingram Micro Xvantage platform, Delvalle said. Xvantage is a new digital experience platform launched in September that aims to improve how the distributor works with partners, including making it easier to finance partner interactions.

“[We’re looking at] how do we leverage our Xvantage platform to be able to combine customers’ ongoing software subscriptions—including cloud with a device payment—in one single monthly payment,” she said.

David Sewell, CEO of Sewell Tech, a Dallas-based MSP, has seen “Get To Yes” in action.

“We’ve never had a customer not get approved,” Sewell said. “Working with Ingram Micro on leasing means bigger deals. I don’t have to do credit approvals. I let the Ingram Micro financial people pull credit and do the approvals. It’s nice to have that option when a client is looking to buy a lot. This makes it easier to close deals.”

Channel financing is a unique specialization that must be able to handle on-premises and off-premises infrastructure and services, Mackle said.

“You have to hire the head count to support those services, you have to buy what’s needed, and you’re billing out over time,” he said. “You’re billing monthly. So you’re getting monthly payments, but it’s out of your pocket. How do you grow that faster? You need cash flow.”

Melanie DelValle Director,

Finance

Anthony Mackle

America

BY CJ FAIRFIELD

Ingram Micro is nothing without its people, said Scott Sherman. And that means the distributor is laser-focused on environmental, social and governance and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

It’s not one versus the other, said Sherman, executive vice president and chief human resources officer at Ingram Micro. DEI and ESG are part of the company’s culture. They are what makes the company what it is.

“It’s ESG with DEI,” he said. “It’s ESG and it’s DEI.”

“We’ve been doing DEI for years,” he said. “Talent is one of our six tenets of success. Being diverse, equitable and inclusive has been a key element of that tenet since before we articulated that tenet. It’s always been a part of who we are.”

DEI is a part of the ESG framework because it’s the people who make Ingram Micro successful, Sherman said.

“We don’t own buildings. We don’t own much technology. What we have are great people who work through processes that focus on customers at the middle,” he said. “Our success is all about people.”

Sherman hopes that bleeds over to its partner community as well.

He encourages partners to think about their own DEI and ESG initiatives and pick where they want to start to make a difference. He said it’s important to engage communities both internally and externally and deliver on those initiatives.

“If we get this right, then our work will be energizing and we’ll be able to share it,” he said. “We’ll be able to wash, rinse and repeat in what we’re doing. If we are energizing in any and all of these efforts, then we’re going to make our community a better place by doing the right things the right way. We think that a more diverse associate community will engage more effectively with our vendor and reseller communities to develop more creative solutions and business opportunities.”

Ingram Micro is also putting its money where its mouth is and making key investments in its people. Just recently it promoted company veteran Susan O’Sullivan to vice president of DEI, a new position.

“DEI has always been in the fabric of Ingram, and we’ve always had these basic principles,” O’Sullivan told CRN in an interview earlier this year. “I think we realized that now more than ever we need to make this a serious commitment. We have to take action. We have to show sustainable and

ongoing action, and I think we [need] to have someone own it.”

O’Sullivan’s role includes looking at DEI and communities and how Ingram Micro can better serve employees and solution providers. The company also appoints team members from around the world as DEI ambassadors and facilitators.

“What we’re doing with those folks is we’re deploying what we call a ‘Together at Ingram Micro’ curriculum,” said Sherman. “It’s our global DEI curriculum. We developed that to be a very global DEI curriculum. Many organizations are focusing on DEI from a very U.S.-centric point of view, and we’re trying not to do that.”

The company also is harnessing its employee resource groups but is not controlling them from the center. The ERGs have the flexibility to grow however they want and “support each other, find excellence, build excellence, and now we’re helping them define what the frameworks for growth should be.”

And those groups help Ingram Micro remain intellectually and emotionally connected to their teams, Sherman said. There also is a directive to reach out to local colleges, universities and vocational schools to forge ties with a younger and more diverse talent pool.

Meanwhile, Ingram Micro keeps its ear to the ground through anonymous internal “pulse” surveys. The distributor’s DEI favorable score was 87 percent, a number Sherman said has increased year over year.

“Ninety-two percent of us believe we treat each other with dignity and respect,” he said. “Ninety percent of us say we can be ourselves at work and be accepted. And then about 80 percent of us say that all of us have the opportunity to advance in the organization. We know that that’s a perception we have to continue to evolve.”

The survey also found that in the first half of 2022, 74 percent of Ingram Micro’s executive roles were filled with internal candidates. Thirteen percent of the company’s associates, on a global level, were either promoted or had developmental job experience in the first half of 2022.

“It really is that career opportunity here,” he said. “That makes us better, smarter, faster, more equitable and more inclusive. We’re really working to make sure that we’re bringing in more diverse talent, and then we’re incubating that talent to grow with us for the future.”

Scott Sherman EVP, Chief Human Resources Officer

Susan O’Sullivan VP, DEI

FINDING DIVERSE TALENT

DEI, ESG Are Central To Ingram Micro’s Culture: ‘Our Success Is All About People’

Game On: Ingram Micro Helps Partners Break Into Untapped Market

BY JOSEPH F. KOVAR

Through its Business and Consumer Division, Ingram Micro sees a big opportunity for solution providers to tap into its gaming portfolio to help people work, live and play better, said Craig Birmingham, the distributor’s vice president and general manager for business and consumer solutions.

Birmingham told CRN his division offers products and services that cut across all three areas, including technology to work remotely, deliver managed print services, enable in-class or remote education, and develop gaming and eSports environments.

“If you get them all working the same way, they’re all intertwined,” he said. “When COVID hit, home became the center of education, entertainment and work. We all became IT specialists and centers of video production.”

That change helped drive Ingram Micro to invest in the gaming market, including building a six-station gaming arena in its Buffalo, N.Y., office, Birmingham said.

“It was really us being able to show our partners, ‘Hey, yeah, gaming’s cool. One, how do you sell it? Two, where do you sell it? And three, why is it important?’ It’s not just your kids playing on Xbox,” he said.

Opportunities in the gaming market are appearing from some pretty big investors and even the government, said James Rocker, CEO of Nerds That Care, a Bohemia, N.Y.based MSP and gaming solution provider that is currently pursuing two gaming deals and leveraging Ingram Micro to support its efforts.

“We’re seeing eSports now at the same level we saw fantasy sports teams 10 years ago,” Rocker said. “There are people in Asia and Europe being paid a good amount of money to be eSports professionals. And just like any athlete, they need the best equipment. So this is an opportunity for us to build the infrastructure and gaming stations to support them.”

Ingram Micro has the products but needs MSPs like Nerds That Care to build the solutions gamers want, Rocker said.

“Gamers want a custom experience and are not looking for the out-of-the-box experience,” he said. This will encourage more MSPs like us to get involved.”

Gaming is gaining importance in the channel as partners find opportunities in verticals they already serve, said Nicholas Anthony Nanez, Ingram Micro’s senior vendor business manager for business and consumer solutions.

“Gaming is important because it’s really started to become popular outside of the home environment,” Nanez said. “And we’re seeing some of this popularity in the verticals that our partners are already selling into: education, hospitality and some commercial entertainment spaces.”

Because Ingram Micro provides partners the IT infrastructure technology behind these buildouts, the distributor is front and center when partners find a budget for creating an eSports lab, Nanez said.

“That’s why we felt that it was important for us to create this program, not only just to say, ‘Hey, here are the products that we offer,’ but also walk them through what an end-to-end solution for these buildouts looks like,” he said.

Gaming is a small part of Ingram Micro’s Business and Consumer Division, but it draws on technology and services from across the entire division, from PCs and monitors to pro-AV offerings, making it a wide channel play, Birmingham said.

“We have resellers that are selling into the education space,” he said. “And there are full-ride scholarships now in gaming. And so you’ve got universities that are building out eSports labs as part of the curriculum, and they’re in competitions. It’s a multibillion-dollar industry right now.”

Solution providers looking to explore the business can get training and certifications, Nanez said. They could try for STEM (science, technology, engineering and math)-accredited certifications, or take courses with a varsity eSports foundation or the National Esports Association, which partners with Ingram Micro, to certify solution providers to become eSports trainers, coaches or program providers.

While there are some solution providers focused on building eSports programs, others often simply stumble across opportunities, Nanez said.

“They may be out doing installs in a library at a university, and the IT director and the athletic director get together because a budget’s [been] created for an eSports program,” he said. “And that’s when Ingram gets brought into the conversation because our IT solution provider doesn’t really know exactly what goes into creating a program and infrastructure.”

Ingram Micro’s new gaming center is similar to what one might see at an internet cafe or a university, Nanez said.

The six-station gaming center includes gaming PCs, a content creation streaming station, a full-blown racing rig with a 49-inch LG monitor, gaming lighting and wall graphics. The distributor can also help partners with customized wall graphics and game and school logos on the headrests on the chairs, he said.

The gaming lab is open by appointment only, Nanez said.

“Associates, vendor partners, reseller partners, even end users can come in as long as they’re with a reseller or a vendor to take a tour and see what we can help them with,” he said.

“I can’t wait to see what Ingram Micro [has built] in its gaming center,” Rocker said. “I look forward to bringing potential customers in to see some of the things being built out and maybe painting a picture of things customers hadn’t thought about.”

Craig Birmingham

Anthony

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