Ingram flys VAD flag

Ingram Micro has made a further bid to move into the value-added distribution game with the opening of a new technical laboratory.

Essentially a sales tool, the lab allows resellers to showcase solutions around high availability data management, virtualisation, performance acceleration, compliance and remote access.

The distributor has partnered with HP for its infrastructure platforms and F5, Veritas/Symantec, VMware, Juniper, Kingston, APC and the recently appointed Brocade, for applications and hardware on top.

According to enterprise business manager Stuart Ellis the facility -- part of the Enterprise Technical Solutions (ETS) division -- was part of a longer term value-added distribution strategy.

“ETS was up and running in 2004 to provide a value-add to our broad-base distribution,” he said. "Its function is to provide reseller support for more complex technologies like 64 bit computing SANs, NAS, UNIX and Linux.”

The lab, and Ingram's ongoing recruitment of skilled staff, would add to ETS’ wider role as a provider of services and support above and beyond Ingram’s core time-and-place offering.

“People don’t come to us for stock availability and price points,” he said. “Our business is founded on technical specialisation and support like our new technical lab.”

Backing this value claim up, Ellis said Ingram would additionally embark on a services practice in 2006.

The ramp-up of its ETS division was also a way for Ingram to woo vendor partners away from smaller, more nimble competitors like Express Data and Dicker Data.

“We can present ourselves to vendors as a complete vehicle to market so they no longer view us as a volume player,” he said. “They can now bring enterprise technologies to us and we can represent them appropriately.”

The move would also allow Ingram to stay relevant to the market by aligning itself to current growth sectors like security and mobility. Greater margins available in these specialist areas would also help Ingram work towards greater profitability.

For Ellis, the coming together of Ingram and Tech Pac was also essential in seeing the lab, and the right vendor mix, off the ground.

“Tech Pacific’s value strategy was around infrastructure, server and storage and Ingram was beavering down a middleware and software path,” he said. “The merger has seen a nice solution piece come together.”

However, with resellers now able to buy everything from an inkjet cartridge to a $1 million SAN sub-system from the distributor, Ellis said Ingram was not losing direction.

“It has been a challenge to battle perceptions but we’ve spent a lot of time getting our act together,” he said. “You won’t win in every market segment but our goal is to be the preferred distributor for every vendor and reseller partner.”

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