Ingram Australia says no to managed services

Ingram Micro has no plans to introduce a managed services offering to the reseller channel in Australia, according to local boss Guy Freeland.

The distributor’s US headquarters last week unveiled an alliance with MSP vendor LPI Level Platforms to rollout managed services.

Ingram is using LPI’s remote monitoring and management software to drive its Seismic Platform and Virtual Services Warehouse, a services offering that resellers can deliver to their customers.

Freeland (pictured) told CRN that Ingram had gone down the "solutions path" with product and pre-sales support services, but would not be striking similar deals in the Asia-Pacific region.

“We’ve tossed it around internally and have questioned whether it’s a core competence for distributors and whether it introduces a level of competition with resellers,” he said.

He said that Ingram Australia, India and Singapore were the only subsidiaries that would have the required technical competencies to rollout these services. “Only three [subsidiaries] have the capability to go down the managed services path,” he said.

Freeland said Ingram in the US was looking for the next area of growth and the local operation would focus on growing its solutions, retail and licensing lines of business.