Ingram Micro Eyes Midmarket, Advanced Technology, with Two New Divisions

Looking to midmarket sales and advanced technologies, IT distributor Ingram Micro has announced two new integrated technology divisions in its U.S. operations and new resources in its core distribution business. Ingram Micro said the new divisions are for channel partners and vendors in the U.S. who sell and support higher-end technology solutions and services.

The new divisions are the Advanced Technology Division and the Advanced Computing Division. Advanced Technology includes networking, security and unified communications and will work with vendors such as Cisco and its data center products. Advanced Computing will focus on servers, virtualization, storage, enterprise software, and power and cooling technology, among others, and will work with vendors such as HP and its data center products.

Keith Bradley, Ingram Micro senior vice president and president of Ingram Micro North America, told Channel Insider that the new divisions will provide channel partners with specialization, high-touch and the dedicated resources they need.

“Both of these areas are growing faster than the core business, which is why we want to be aligned with the resellers going forward,” Bradley said.

The Advanced Technology Division is led by Ingram Micro’s Ken Bast, a vice president and general manager. And the Advanced Computing Division is led by Scott Zahl, also a vice president and general manager. Both divisions have access to the Ingram Micro’s partner service teams such as credit, customer service, licensing, marketing, purchasing, IT professional services and technical support.

"Ingram Micro’s new divisions blur the lines between value and volume and address the advanced technologies and multi-vendor solutions that are moving the market forward," says Chris Ilg, research director, infrastructure channels and alliances, IDC, in a statement. "By aligning the company’s resources to better service the needs of both the vendor and VAR community, Ingram Micro is evolving its service delivery model to better align with the future of IT computing."

Ingram Micro also announced some new investments to strengthen its core business. They include dedicated teams with specialized resources to simplify the order management process for channel partners. The new teams on the vendor solutions and organized to simplify the entire quote-to-order entry process and tracking of all orders from select IT vendor partners.

"These new specialists and incremental resources were added to ease the process around more complex quoting, as well as the order management required for procuring advanced technologies and computing solutions. The new resources will enhance the overall customer experience and make our vendor management and sales organization even more efficient," said Paul Bay, executive vice president, Ingram Micro North America, in a statement.