Ingram Micro Cloud boss expects UK cloud spend to grow 'like crazy'

Nimesh Davé opens up to CRN on his plans to take advantage of faster cloud adoption in the region

The UK government's distraction in recent years has led to the slower adoption and spend on cloud, but that will soon change, predicted Nimesh Davé, EVP of Ingram Micro Cloud.

Speaking with CRN at the distie's UL Cloud Summit in London, Davé said that the UK's rate of cloud adoption has been slower than in other markets but he expects the UK government to pick up speed in this regard.

"The UK's been dealing with too many other issues around data privacy, GDPR and Brexit," he noted.

"But I think now we will see a very fast movement to cloud adoption. The UK government is going to fuel cloud spend massively because cloud is not just a technology, it's an economic enabler.

"The UK is a services economy and to fuel that you will see it accelerate cloud like crazy. The pie here is super big and that's why everyone invests here.

"You will see us get a lot bigger in the UK. I have 14 countries that I personally focus on and the UK market needs to be my third biggest market worldwide in the next 24 months, and it could end up being my second biggest."

In his keynote presentation at the event, Davé told partners that the cloud opportunity was around £10bn in the MSP space alone and that he plans to use the channel to take a chunk of that market.

"We're a channel-first company," he explained.

"We build the toolkits and our job is to get those toolkits into as many people's hands as possible and the more hands we get those into the more we sell.

"Ultimately, the organisations that are the most successful in the future are the ones who are going to build the best toolkits for their partners because they are expensive to build, and we can build them for partners of all sizes."

The cloud boss also told the crowd the importance of changing business models to adapt to the changing nature of the channel, as well as talking up its CloudBlue commerce platform, which it launched last year.

CloudBlue offers more than the usual marketplace, claims Davé, adding that though Ingram does have its marketplace, it is prioritising the "curated catalogue" for partners.

If you go to a marketplace you get lots of things, but it's not customised to what you want," he explained.

"CloudBlue is a hyperscale commerce platform and has a digital experience called a marketplace, but the marketplace itself isn't creating anything you win in - you don't win in the marketplace, you win in the catalogue.

"One of the things we are very conscious of is that you have to bring the right tech to the market.

"So if you were to look at AWS' marketplace, there are tons of ISVs there, but try to find the one you want and that's the issue. You go there and you can't find it. So we take the right ones and personalise it to you."

Davé was keen to push away the description of Ingram as a broadliner, instead positioning it as a software publisher that currently has 700 engineers on its books to create and enhance the tools and features it offers partners.

With the likes of Westcoast spinning out its cloud business and other disties like Tech Data and Arrow pushing more into the services space, Davé was bullish in his assertion of Ingram's advances.

"Can somebody catch us? It's tough. Can somebody get better at it than us? Yes, that's why we don't get complacent," he stated.

"We are relentless in the pursuit of our technology and automation. Do I think more and more of our competitors will use our software? I do because it's too expensive - people can't afford to do it."