Distributing the virtual message

As virtualisation continues to prove itself as the shining star of the IT space, distribution giant Ingram Micro has reacted to demand with the formation and continued expansion of its own virtualisation practice.

Dealing with the biggest reseller base in Australia, Ingram is well placed to mediate between virtualisation’s most significant players and a reseller base keen to stay on top of the latest technology booms.

“Just about every reseller along the way is going to sell virtualisation,” said Peter Pollari, business manager for the virtualisation practice at Ingram Micro. “We need to take this as a given, it is going to happen. What we want to encourage and support is to allow the reseller to go and solve business problems.”

Ingram’s virtualisation practice is one facet of the firm’s Solutions Group, currently under the leadership of its general manager, Stuart Ellis.

“We have very specialised focuses or business units, including virtualisation,” said Pollari. “This allows cross collaboration between the other business units. A virtualisation trend affects all of our Solutions Group businesses as it crosses through our HP, IBM, applications, Unified Communications, networking and security units.”

Pollari said Ingram is continuing to expand its virtualisation practice in Australia, with the recent appointment of a new business development manager (BDM) in Sydney and another to follow in Melbourne.

Vendor stable

“The messaging we are building out is that it is not just about point products, it is about solutions. Initially VMware is the core of our offering and we are building complimentary vendors around that,” he said. “We have taken on PlateSpin, Avocent and we have also taken on services after partnering with TAS (Technical Architecture Solutions) – a non-conflicting third-party services organisation. We have partnered with TAS to provide post-sales implementation to allow a reseller to augment their own services.”

Ingram will also be looking to add “additional complimentary vendors” into its virtualisation practice moving forward.

“We are trying to avoid vendors with overlap,” said Pollari. “We want to build up true solutions rather than just shoving out products. As part of the selection process we undertook, we consulted very heavily with our other business units and the other business managers, in particular around HP and IBM. Avocent has an OEM relationship with HP and IBM. If you look at PlateSpin, we wanted to make sure it worked across all our technologies and it does that. We are leveraging the technology we have in the other business units in the Solutions Group.”

Technical support

Pollari said putting feet on the street from a technical installation perspective is expensive and can initially burden a reseller. However, by adopting TAS’ services, it is not intrusive to a reseller and allows them to skill-up from a technical perspective, when they are ready.

“Resellers can keep selling products, services and solutions, then add this technical layer when required,” he said. “Specifically around virtualisation we have 12 VCPs (VMware Certified Professional). We now have two dedicated virtualisation BDMs in NSW and we are adding another in Victoria. We have two dedicated virtualisation products managers. We want to increase our staff in this area. One of the challenging things about adding staff is finding people with the right skills set. We provide the pre-sales architecture services and TAS does the post-sales implementation.”

data centre distributing message the virtual