Ingram adds EMC to storage portfolio

The distie has created an EMC/VMWare business unit that will report to David Lenz, who heads up the Enterprise Technology Group (formerly the Solutions Group).

EMC joins IBM and HP as the only vendors to have their own business units at Ingram since the distributor restructured in early March.

The EMC unit is actively recruiting associates, said Jay Miley, vice president and managing director of Ingram Micro.

"I'm optimistic about the storage market in general," he said.

Miley said obvious drivers for growth in storage include rich data content and the needs of enterprise for backup and disaster recovery.  "The storage market is one worth investing in," he added.

"Our value proposition is about providing choice in the marketplace but Ingram had been unable to offer a full range until now," said Miley.

Ingram resellers previously had limited options when it came to working with customers using storage from EMC, the market leader in Australia.

EMC rounds out Ingram's storage portfolio that includes IBM and HP at the top end and Seagate and Maxtor in the consumer market.

David Henderson, general manager channel and partners, EMC A/NZ said Ingram would have access to the full EMC range of products. "We have no restrictions" on distribution, said Henderson.

EMC extended its product range into the consumer market with the acquisition of Iomega in April last year, and the Ingram signing is a logical step in addressing that market.

As Australia's largest distributor, Ingram has resellers that service SOHO customers as well as enterprise.

"Ingram offers a very broad range of resellers to us," from retail to corporate, said Henderson.

The extended reseller base presented many opportunities. "Geographical coverage is very important, and selling into regional centres as well. OEM is another opportunity."

Henderson said there was a twofold catalyst for storage in 2009; the combination of blade servers and virtualisation.

Ingram is a major distributor of VMWare, and Henderson said he expected "dramatic" results from selling storage to the VMWare installed base.

Henderson said the Ingram deal would not affect EMC's three-year relationship with distributor Westcon Group.

"We grew 80 percent with [Westcon] last year"  and are looking forward to a strong 2009, said Henderson.