Felix Wong - Chief Country Executive A/NZ, Ingram Micro
“But the key is to make them fast and not rely on someone overseas to make a decision for you. In this market the fast eat the slow.”
Inside Ingram Micro’s Cloud
Core to Ingram Micro’s reinvention on a local and global scale is the distributor’s expanding arsenal of Cloud services, built on its marketplace platform.
“What’s the magnitude of what we’re doing within the Cloud?” asked Ingram Micro executive vice president of Global Cloud Computing, Nimesh Dave, when speaking to ARN on the ground in Australia.
“It’s huge. But what makes Ingram Micro different? It’s the size of our service catalogue and the depth and breadth of our engineering team.”
With strong technical knowledge in spearheading the formation of a supply chain services division, Ingram Micro’s transformation falls under the remit of the former Tech Data executive, who is setting a global standard for Cloud provisioning in distribution.
Drawing on the largest vendor portfolio on the planet, Dave orchestrates a team of more than 1,500 Cloud-dedicated employees, including over 700 technical engineers, providing a one-stop shop for all channel Cloud-related needs.
“We are a software company with software engineers building software, it’s that simple,” he said. “Our aim is lift businesses to the Cloud through Innovation, Collaboration and Excellence - which spells ICE, something that if you hold in your hand for too long will melt because speed is everything.
“But to achieve speed you need investment and global reach, and we have both.”
As an ecosystem of buyers, sellers and solutions that enables partners to research, buy, sell, provision, configure and manage a wide range of Cloud solutions from a single pane of glass, the company’s Cloud division is accelerating in parallel with market demand.
“We’ve built a lot of marketplaces but if you don’t put the right products in there with the right user experience and interface, then it can’t be consumed,” Dave explained.
“There’s many great Cloud platforms in the market but it’s like having a beautiful car with no air in the tyres, what are you going to do with it now?”
Service management
In moving away from the transactional nature of distribution, Dave said the company’s focus on service management is enabling partners to become “rainmakers”, billed as the next generation of business pioneers, implementing the solutions of tomorrow.
“The platform is only one simple part of the Cloud equation,” he added. “It’s a combination of many different variables as the business model transforms from the traditional means of selling to service management.
“Yet for many distributors in the market, they are still trying to operate Cloud through the notion of bi-selling and they are going to encounter hardship.
“For example, if you concede price and take a deal at minus two per cent because you’re getting a six per cent back-end rebate, while you’re all happy that your net is up, when the rebate goes away you’re stuck with an ongoing sale that is a minus two per cent margin.
“This is a business where we have a gift that keeps on giving, or a gift that keeps on taking.”
In understanding the concept of lifetime customer buying, Dave advised traditional VARs to think of the bigger picture when striking up Cloud relationships, cautioning against short-term thinking.
Through leveraging the Odin Service Automation platform - which the distributor acquired in late December 2015 - Dave said Ingram Micro is “no longer one organisation”, as it exposes the channel to its expanding services play.
“We now sell to telcos, hosters, MSPs, SIs and VARs, building technology solutions for multi-channel Cloud enablement,” he added.
“Telstra is one of our largest Odin customers, running multi-Cloud on the platform through provisioning and management, alongside a host of other telcos across the world.”
In echoing Dave’s observations, Wong said investment continues to be made locally to facilitate the company’s Cloud progression, with Odin engineers now working in Ingram Micro offices across the country.
Building for success
Offering an honest and frank assessment of the new-look Ingram Micro, and its position within the market, Wong said the distributor “remains open” to further local acquisitions to increase market share.
“As company of Ingram Micro’s size and scaler is always open to acquiring businesses that make sense,” he said.
“But that’s the key, it needs to have meaning to us as a company. We see no value in buying a standalone business to just plunk on the side of our organisation and do nothing with, we’re not a holding company.”
For Wong, Ingram Micro acquisitions are built around “adding and broadening” capabilities, typified through the acquisition of specialist New Zealand-based distributor Connector Systems earlier this year.
“With any acquisition we make, we look to leverage that business onto our platform, which is what we are doing with Connector Systems,” he said. “They have a much more sizeable business in New Zealand and we’re leveraging off the back of this in a highly scalable manner.
“The Australian aspect offers the same on a smaller scale, and we’re closely knitting both businesses into our team, allowing the team, vendors and partners to access all of our capabilities.”
From a technological standpoint, Wong said the distributor is forever “scouring the market” for emerging technologies and vendors also, investigating new hot spots and future trends.
“We’re making bets,” he said. ”Some work and some won’t but for the ones that do, they have the potential to be game-changing.
“We’re fortunate as a large organisation to make these bets and if they do become successful, we can go from zero to 100kmph just like that and that’s a crucial differentiator for our business.”
In leaning backwards to assess the landscape, Wong acknowledged that all industries endure change, subsequently forcing change on the competitive players within that space.
“We’re ever fearful of markets changing and are always looking at how it impacts our business locally,” he said. “Staying at the forefront of the industry is critical but quite simply, it’s the only way to survive.”
Having survived its biggest test of character in 2011, 2016 and beyond promises new horizons for the distribution giant in Australia, under the banner of Ingram Micro 2.0.
This article was originally published in the July issue of ARN magazine.
