Ingram Micro speaks out over CCD acquisition

Johan Vandenbussche: The acquisition is the completion of Ingram's value strategy

Ingram Micro sees its acquisition of Computacenter's distribution arm CCD as the completion of its value strategy in the UK.

Speaking to CRN after a meeting with CCD employees at its Maidenhead office, Johan Vandenbussche, vice president pan-European business unit at Ingram Micro, said: “As a company we are extremely excited about this announcement and we were working until late this morning to get the paperwork done.”

Rumours of a CCD deal have been circling the channel for weeks, but Ingram's acquisition – for an undisclosed sum – was announced today.

Vandenbussche said the acquisition completes Ingram’s three-pronged value stategy – its networking arm, which it gained through the acquisition of Sphinx CST's Cisco inventory in 2001, its PoS/datacapture arm, and with the CCD acquisition – its enterprise infrastructure and storage arm.

“For us this is the completion of our strategy and we have started to bring all parts of the puzzle together. We are seeing a lot of synergies between the businesses,” he said.

“CCD as a company plays a big part in the entry-level server market with HP that will be complementary to our sales force. We are very excited to find a player with which we do not have overlap in our portfolios, and we see an opportunity to maximise both sides if we do the correct integration,” he added.

The CCD brand will be preserved for the next four to five months, he revealed, but after that it will be phased out to become the Enterprise Computing and Enterprise Storage division.

Vandenbussche added that the deal will take pressure off the CCD team because it will no longer be part of a hybrid model.

“Hybrid models are from the past and CCD customers will be relieved when they see the two are separated. They will not feel they are competing any more. The Ingram infrastructure is 100 per cent dedicated to distribution and this has not been the main business for Computacenter for some time. I think the CCD employees will have a much bigger voice in Ingram Micro.”

He added that the deal has initial support from CCD’s main vendor partner HP.

“HP understands our value strategy, but of course it will always have a critical look at our strategy. But for where we are today, we have the blessing of HP.”