Reselling cloud: Uber Global

Ingram Micro is yet to give much detail on how last week's major cloud announcements will affect local partners, but one of them recently offered CRN insight into its experiences with the distie's white label cloud service.

Uber Global launched its white label managed services and cloud hosting business in July 2012. Since then, it has signed over 4000 white label customers, and the hosting side of the business looks after in excess of 100,000 websites.

Key to Uber’s white label growth is the relationship it has with Ingram Micro. According to Uber’s chief executive Dennis Jorgenson, Ingram passes on resellers interested in offering managed services and hosting to Uber, which then offers the white label service on behalf of Ingram. Ingram handles the billing.

Uber’s business manager, Michael Plazinski, put it this way: “If there’s a company, call them Joe’s Reseller, and they want to offer managed services, cloud services, SaaS and so on to their customers, they go to Ingram, Ingram passes them on to us, and we offer white label services under the Joe’s brand name.”

The upshot is that Joe’s customers get their services under Joe’s brand-name, and all support is also offered under Joe’s name, but the cloud nuts and bolts, billing and technology side of things are handled by Uber. Service and support is also offered on behalf of the cloud services customer.

“We have 24 by 7 service and support,” said Jorgenson. “If someone calls one of our techs, that call is registered under the reseller’s name, the phone is answered in their name, and the support call is resolved on their behalf,” he told CRN. “The Uber brand-name does not come into it at that level.”

According to Plazinski, Uber offers all of Microsoft’s cloud services, including managed Exchange, Windows Shared Hosting, Sharepoint and other services. “We offer all of the Microsoft Suite,” he said. “We just don’t call it Office 365,” he added. “That’s because Microsoft signed an exclusive deal with Telstra to offer 365-branded services,” he said, with some irony.

The Uber service isn’t  limited to Windows, however. There’s Linux Shared Hosting as well as virtual machines. The company also offers white label domain name services, and SSL certificates.

But back to Joe’s web hosting and cloud services. The key for Ingram is it can refer customers to white label providers like Uber, and then the customer relationship, and the provision of services, is all handled by Uber.

Joe’s customers get an invoice with Joe’s name on it, and the money goes straight to Joe’s bank account, noted Plazinski.

“The relationship from there is that Ingram bills Joe, and we subsequently bill Ingram for provision of the service,” he said.

With the white label service launched in July, and with around 4000 white label customers on board, the services are exceeding expectations, said chief executive Jorgenson.

“Over the last ten months we have smashed our targets, and we’re doubling down on the provision of white label services as a major revenue stream for the business,” he said.

In response to questions about its plans to launch locally new cloud programs announced in the US last week, Ingram Micro Australia senior business manager enterprise software and cloud services,  Lee Welch, said "watch this space".