Ingram Micro: partners need to do more than just resell

Distie tells partners at i360 Cloud Conference that they need to find new ways of differentiating themselves

Ingram Micro Cloud today told its partners that to stay successful they need to find ways to differentiate themselves by adding onto vendor products.

Speaking at its i360 Cloud Conference in Brighton, Ingram Micro's director of cloud in Northern Europe, Apay Obang-Oyway (pictured), told partners the "challenge is real differentiation" in the channel, adding that the distie's Cloud Marketplace platform has been designed with this in mind.

"A recent IDC report highlights the reality for partners. Partners that are actually in the cloud tend to grow twice as fast, be far more profitable, and have a very strong recurring revenue business. Our ecosystem of cloud brings together our community of partners, over 200,000 partners worldwide, with a leading portfolio of cloud solutions," he said.

"Underpinning that is really the enablement we are bringing in terms of go-to-market and business transformation enablement. All that is part of how we are transforming ourselves and creating value capabilities for our partners."

Ingram Micro is currently running promotions for resellers on the marketplace, in partnership with Microsoft. The distie hopes the promotions, which run until the end of December 2016, will encourage more partners to sign up to the marketplace, which has around 15,000 partners already.

"You have to start moving with the market. How you differentiate yourself is the key"

Obang-Oyway added that the distributor's most successful partners on the marketplace are those with over 1,000 seats on the marketplace, with more than 50 end users, selling over five cloud solutions.

"As well as this, they are the ones not just reselling cloud services," he explained. "It is about looking at what [they] can build around that. What are the managed services [they] can provide around the solutions. That is what we are seeing more and more now."

Speaking at the event, Chris Dunning, founder of TechQuarters, told partners that through developing on top of vendor solutions and differentiating itself in the market, the reseller has added 41 per cent net new customers to its portfolio in the past year.

"That is broadly around 60-plus customers we have added in one year, more than the previous year," he said. "The market is moving all the time. You have to start moving with the market. How you differentiate yourself is the key. The support market is declining, so you have to think of new ways to differentiate yourself. You've got to think carefully about the things you can add to existing and new licence deals."