Ingram Micro wants to take its new IBM software portfolio beyond Tivoli Storage Manager in order to become a full scale IBM house, the distributor has revealed.
After gaining its first taste of distributing IBM software last week, Ingram today revealed its long term IBM strategy to CRN.
"For my IBM business in the future, I'd like more access," Jonathon Fox, IBM & APC business manager for Ingram's Enterprise Technology Group told CRN.
"Tivoli Storage Manager was a big thing to get hold of," he said. But, "the next step for Ingram would be all of Tivoli" and in long term "we would like to be [a] full-blown IBM [distributor]," he said.
Traditionally focused on IBM hardware, which Fox said still "is important to Ingram", IBM's software group gives Ingram access to functionality that it has otherwise lacked.
Fox said Ingram has "skilled up" its solutions architects for Tivoli storage and brought on a new product manager. Fox himself is a relative newcomer, joining the company late last year.
IBM also added Avnet as authorised distributor for its Tivoli Storage Manager.
The new distribution appointments apply only to new sales, Fox explained.
Existing resellers have been told to continue buying through existing distributors itX, Westcon and Express Data.
"We're not fulfilling [existing] business," said Fox.
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