Ingram Micro Cloud Summit: 5 Day One Highlights
Ingram Micro Cloud Summit (NYSE:IM) kicked off today in Phoenix. Roughly 850 attendees are here — from VARs and MSPs to emerging CSPs and cloud services brokerages (CSBs). Amid numerous breakout sessions, there was plenty of partner chatter in the hallways. In fact, here are five highlights from Day One conversations with Talkin' Cloud.
5. Hosted PBXes Take Off: That's the talk from Intermedia Senior VP Bob Leibholz. It sounds like the Hosted Exchange provider is ahead of budget with its emerging hosted PBX channel business.
4. Cisco Education: I think Ken Thoreson of Acumen Management Group spent today educating VARs about Cisco's Hosted Collaboration Solution, which is now available via Ingram Micro Cloud. I think Cisco has one of the largest footprints here.
3. Making the Rounds: CloudAny, a VDI specialist working with Citrix and Microsoft, has a few dozen VARs running in its cloud, according to Founder Robert Breitman.
2. Quiet Moves: Keep an eye on Cirrity. President and CTO Dan Timko and COO Andrew Albrecht are making some very intriguing moves. Sorry I can't say more than that — at least not yet.
1. Triple Play: dinCloud is best known as a VDI (virtual desktop integration) provider to VARs and MSPs. But listen closely to the company's message, and you'll see a bigger picture emerging. It involves business continuity, backup and virtual servers. Indeed, Ingram is expanding its dinCloud line card with all three of those services.
That's all for now. Stay tuned for live blogs throughout Tuesday, April 9. It's a safe bet Ingram VP Renee Bergeron will talk up the opportunity for VARs and telco agents to work more closely with other in the cloud.
