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IT distributor Ingram Micro announced two new, integrated technology divisions within its U.S. operations, as well as additional resources within its core distribution business. The Advanced Technology and Advanced Computing Divisions are designed to offer greater opportunity, specialization and business value to channel partners in the United States who market, sell and support technology solutions and services.
Built to serve the business and technical needs of vendors and solution providers, the divisions offer channel partners an approach to identifying and pursuing opportunities within advanced technology categories such as unified communications, virtualization, data center infrastructure, network security and storage. “The addition of these two overarching technology divisions allows Ingram Micro to provide the specialization, high customer touch and dedicated resources necessary to further advance our channel partners into midmarket opportunities and help them capture more profitable growth,” said Keith Bradley, senior executive vice president and president of Ingram Micro North America.
The Advanced Technology Division, which is led by Ingram Micro’s vice president and general manager, Ken Bast, supports the development of high-profile and emerging networking and security solutions, as well as unified communications solutions. The Advanced Computing Division, led by vice president and general manager Scott Zahl, focuses on the growth of advanced computing and infrastructure technology solutions including enterprise software, storage and virtualization. Both divisions have access to the company’s experienced partner shared 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 multivendor solutions that are moving the market forward,” says Chris Ilg, research director, infrastructure channels and alliances for IT research firm IDC. “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.”
The company also announced it had made a number of investments to its core business, such as establishing dedicated teams with specialized resources that work to navigate the complexities of IT vendors’ order management processes. These new teams are focused on the vendor solutions and organized to simplify the 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. “With this new game plan in play, Ingram Micro is building a competitive advantage that is beneficial for us and our channel partners both now and in the future.”