Ingram Micro Extends Cloud Alliance with IBM

There’s a world of difference between one shopping experience and another. With that in mind Ingram Micro has invested heavily in building the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace, through which solution providers can automate both the acquisition and provisioning of cloud services.

The latest addition to the cloud services to the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace as of today is the IBM SoftLayer cloud service. While Ingram Micro has a long standing relationship with IBM, this latest effort extends that partnership to allow solution providers to fully automate the deployment of a cloud service that gives customers access to both virtual and bare-metal servers.

Renee Bergeron, vice president of global cloud computing for Ingram Micro, said that in general solution providers are starting to better associate different cloud services with specific types of application workload requirements. As such, Bergeron said it’s not uncommon now to see solution providers carrying 12 or more multiple cloud infrastructure and application providers to their line cards; some of which inevitably overlap in terms of the services they provide.

The Ingram Cloud Marketplace, said Bergeron, is designed to provide a single portal through which solution providers can full automate everything from provisioning those services to billing. In addition, Bergeron said Ingram Micro has also developed an application programming interface (API) that makes it simpler for solution providers to programmatically invoke cloud resources without having to make use of the portal.

Bergeron said the rise of the cloud also means that solution providers are less inclined to devote capital to building out their own data center facilities. Rather than having to acquire IT infrastructure equipment and then manage the refresh cycle associated with that equipment, Bergeron said solution providers are more inclined whenever they can to make use of cloud services that can be invoked on demand.

The reason those partners rely on Ingram Micro to access those services, said Bergeron, is that unlike other marketplaces Ingram Micro provides a full range of support services as well as access to professional services. The cost of providing those services is then offloaded to Ingram Micro, said Bergeron. That’s critical, added Bergeron, because it enables solution providers to free up more of their own resources to focus on business consulting and development.

Naturally, it remains to be seen exactly how the role of distributors such as Ingram Micro will evolve in the age of the cloud. But as cloud computing continues to evolve the rate and pace of adoption of those services suggests that solution providers are going to need all the external help they can get.