Ingram Micro adds Dropbox to UK Cloud Marketplace

Brand recognition from consumer background to help boost enterprise growth, claims Ingram's cloud boss

Ingram Micro has added Dropbox Business to its Cloud Marketplace due to what it claims is increased demand for cloud-based file sharing.

The distie has signed an exclusive global agreement with Dropbox and from today its wares will feature on the UK Cloud Marketplace - an ecosystem for buyers, sellers and solutions that was launched last year.

Ingram's director for northern Europe cloud Apay Obang-Oyway told CRN that the move is significant.

"We will always have the leading technologies in our portfolio and we certainly see Dropbox as a leader in its space," he said. "It's genuine technology innovation and an opportunity for our partners. It was an easy and natural decision. They see a lot of strength and leadership in where we are in cloud. It was a natural marriage."

Dropbox was founded in 2007 and claims to have more than 500 million customers globally. The company first enjoyed success in the consumer space before turning towards the enterprise.

Obang-Oyway said that this puts the company in a strong position because of its high brand recognition.

"The latest iteration of Dropbox is very much geared towards the enterprise," he said. "The consumer background is a strength, not a weakness. There's a consumerisation of IT. They're known; they're trusted. It's not something strange and new. There are other brands out there today that have come from a consumer background who have got a place in the business world. You could even include Apple in that with phones. It's an opportunity."

Dropbox was forced to defend itself in 2014 after reports surfaced that it had been hacked, compromising customer details. In a blog at the time, it claimed the reports were not true and that the usernames and passwords were "stolen from unrelated services" and used to log into sites including Dropbox. It insisted it has measures in place to detect suspicious login activity.

Obang-Oyway said security is an essential consideration for it and its partners.

"If you consider the speed with which cloud continues to be adopted and the growth we are seeing in cloud today, security concerns in some cases are reducing," he said.

"We are getting better about educating about the security capability that's within various cloud services. It's important to make sure we, and our partners, look at those with leading technologies.

"Whenever we engage with Dropbox or Microsoft, or IBM and so on, we're naturally comfortable that these organisations have invested a great deal in securing their own customers' environment. Security concern is always there, on-premise and in the cloud, and it should be. But it's an opportunity for our partners to add greater value to their end customers around that security piece."