Ingram acquires Odin platform behind its cloud marketplace

Ingram Micro has acquired assets, including intellectual property, of the Odin services automation platform from vendors Parallels. 

The deal hands the distributor ownership of the system that drives its cloud marketplace, with Ingram hiring around 500 employees, many of them software engineers.

Ingram Micro started using the Odin platform in 2013, licensing the technology to fuel its move into online delivery of solutions. Here in Australia, Ingram's cloud marketplace went live earlier this year, based on foundation vendors Microsoft and SkyKick to allow channel to partners provide services such as mailbox migrations. More vendors are expected to be announced imminently.

Globally, the world's biggest IT distributor claims to have commercial relationships with 285 telcos, 4,000 hosting companies and more than 200,000 resellers.

Ingram Micro CEO Alain Monié said: “In recent years, the launch of Ingram Micro’s automated cloud platform and marketplace has positioned our company at the forefront of the evolution and adoption of cloud solutions by businesses throughout the world. Now the time has come for us to expand our capabilities by owning the intellectual property that is helping to drive this technology evolution."

The purchase mirrors a similar move by rival distributor Westcon, which built its own global cloud marketplace on the Verecloud platform, then went on to acquire the intellectual property. Thsi enabled the distributor to owns its "cloud distribution strategy end to end" and become "masters of our own universe", Darryl Grauman, Westcon's Asia Pacific services & cloud solutions director, told CRN at the time.