Working in close collaboration with IT industry leaders including HP, Microsoft, Cisco, Symantec, CA Technologies, Ipanema, APC, and SNIA Europe, Ingram Micro UK has seen overwhelming response from its reseller partner community. They are now actively transforming their business models to capture the opportunities with Cloud Computing and Managed Services. Branded CTA 2.Go, the Alliance is broadening its scope to a more solutions-oriented and “Cloudaborative” technology focus - from the datacentre to the device including virtualisation, mobility, and Unified Communications.
“We have moved from the ‘What is Cloud Computing?’ and ‘Where is my data?’ questions so often asked in previous years, to questions such as “How can I incorporate Cloud into larger technology solutions?’ and ‘When is Cloud most practical according to my end-customer’s needs, budget, and location”, explains Jon Bunyard, Value Director, Ingram Micro.
Last year the Channel Transformation Alliance was launched with some simple and practical goals. The Alliance set out to help resellers assess, quantify, and respond to both the threats and the opportunities arising from the emergence of IT-as-a-Service models. A goal was to take away the fear and uncertainly many felt about the Cloud. A further goal of the initiative was to help resellers understand the business model options that were available to them with Cloud Computing, broadly characterised as Cloud Services Broker or Cloud Service Provider model.
“The advancements that the Channel Transformation Alliance is making in bringing resellers closer to cloud computing, managed services and mobile communications enhances and strengthens Ingram Micro UK’s position as we grow into these technologies. We foresee that the increased learning opportunities in the programme will then act as the ideal springboard into areas such as unified communications and beyond”, Jon concluded.
In the first year of the Channel Transformation Alliance, this multi-vendor educational initiative has exceeded its members’ initial milestones, including delivering field-based training to over two thousand resellers. Additionally, over 10,000 unique visitors from within the IT channel have connected to the Channel Transformation Alliance’s multi-language website to read educational content, download practical business tools, and watch training videos.
As a result of enhancements launching today, the website www.channeltransformation.com includes both a ‘Beginner’ track and an ‘Advanced’ track in order to address resellers in the channel who are at different stages of adoption and business model maturity for Cloud Computing and the technologies mentioned earlier. Over 1000 resellers have actively used this website and our members’ partner portals to apply the step by step business transformation the Alliance is supporting. For them, broadening the technology scope is a logical next phase to help them build a healthy solutions portfolio containing not only cloud solutions but also other advanced and emerging end-to-end solutions. Understanding those new technologies will help the reseller to create their own in-house solutions and to identify cross-selling opportunities ultimately helping them to become a successful Cloud Services Broker or Provider.