Why AWS partners buddy up with Ingram Micro

Imagine you had spent years scaling partner program tiers only to be wiped out owing to a quirk in the vendor agreement.

Now imagine a white knight reinstates your privileges and benefits.

That’s the outcome Ingram Micro Australia achieved for a reseller that lost traction with their vendor and original distributor.

And that’s the hallmark dedication Ingram Micro brings to the cloud, says the distributor’s infrastructure as a service (IaaS) sales lead, Phil Duke.

Although many resellers were successful going direct with cloud vendors like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Duke says partners gain clout when they buddy up with Ingram Micro.

“Partners lose nothing by going through Ingram and they gain everything,” said Duke, a certified AWS Cloud Practitioner and ANZ IaaS Sales Leader.

“Ingram becomes an extension to all the great AWS service offerings provided by AWS and can utilise our global expertise and traditional vendor resell business to provide partners an end to end service.”

Duke said it’s a “myth” that resellers lose visibility if they deal through a distributor.

“It’s the exact opposite, working with Ingram Micro. We advocate for our partners with AWS and provide partner enablement, training, and other benefits to maximise our partner investment.”

He said Ingram Micro’s AWS partner programs helps our partners grow with AWS, plus leveraging Ingrams global buying power to offer benefits such as reserved instances that have the deepest discounts and flexible payment terms, to assist our partners and their customers cash flow. Ingram also provides rebates, training, subsidised certification, free services, AWS monitoring service and more.

CRN recently facilitated AWS partners at a Brisbane roundtable to canvass their business plans and learn how Queensland was emerging from pandemic lockdown. Duke co-hosted with Ingram Micro Cloud Director Trent Gomersall and Channel Development Cloud Solutions manager Sam Di Bartolo.

Partners surf AWS wave as Australia powers out of pandemic

As Gartner expects Australians to invest $1.35 billion in infrastructure as a service (IaaS) this year (up $A250 million in a year for 15.5 per cent total cloud investment), speeding time to value while cutting risk are strategic differentiators. Indeed, providing IaaS is a path to rapid growth for a third of the CRN Fast50 in 2020. And while enterprise customers were 40 per cent of the Fast50 IaaS sales, mid-market and SMB (a third of sales) may experience great growth potential as partner programs lower costs and lift capability.

Roundtable partners said key considerations to expanding their IaaS cloud practices were:

• How to eliminate ‘bill shock’ when a customer outpaces their cloud solution
• How to leap into IaaS if retiring infrastructure or changing business models
• When to make the leap from owned infrastructure to IaaS in public cloud
• How to scale rapidly while acquiring skills and aligning revenue
• How to build rapport and trust with customers to speed their cloud journey
• How to build a hybrid or multi-cloud that exceeds customer expectations.

Partners also highlighted their desire for a distributor that streamlined the customer acquisition and on-boarding processes by introducing them to prospects and other partners with whom they can team up while cutting “red tape” such as by providing self-serve options.

Ingram Micro AWS program built with partners at its heart

In response to such challenges, Ingram Micro has crafted several AWS partner programs, including their AWS Partner Transformation Program (PTP) and scaled internal resources including consultancy, and around-the-clock support, said Gomersall.

Other services and benefits Ingram Micro provides its AWS partners are:

• Business support – Discounts, license rights, streamlined back-end financial platform with billing, cost optimisation, credit, and end-customer reporting
• Marketing – Partner directory listing, partner-branded content
• Enablement – Onboarding, webinars and workshops for sales and technical staff, partner and customer Immersion Days
• Ingram Cloud Marketplace – One-stop shop to consume, publish, and integrate cloud services and platforms through APIs
• Knowledge support – Ingram Micro’s consulting-led team plugs gaps in a partner’s skills capability and capacity
• Worldwide exposure – Partners leverage Ingram Micro’s global footprint to market their own solutions
• Free CloudCheckr – Optimises public cloud costs, performance and security
• Other free services – Well-architected services, migration, subsidised certification training.

Gomersall pointed to Ingram Micro’s partner-to-partner program as an innovative way for resellers to gain scarce skills when they need them and share opportunities in a trusted and collaborative ecosystem.

“Their customers tell them they need to transform, but it’s hard to get started. That’s where we bring our partners together on AWS cloud so everyone benefits.”