Image Gallery: Ingram Micro ONE 2018 Featuring IBM, Cisco
Ingram Micro One is in the rearview mirror, and if you missed it, here’s a glimpse of what 1,500 attendees got to do when they gathered in Washington, D.C., last week.
Top of mind at the conference was building your business around intellectual property, IoT, security, IP and CloudBlue, the cloud commerce engine.
There were guest speakers such as Tiffani Bova, global customer growth and innovation evangelist at Salesforce; IDC’s Michelle Bailey, group vice president, general manager and research fellow; and the powerful and entertaining Tom Peters, writer on business-management practices.
The late Willie Sutton, infamous American bank robber, was there in spirit.
Vendor breakout sessions were plentiful, there were business workshops, a cybersecurity live hacking demo, and the Solutions Showcase. To close the event, attendees celebrated with a costume party rock concert — well, it was the eve before Halloween.
On the news front, Ingram Micro introduced the RenewVue portal to help partners streamline the licensing process; the distributor’s Advanced Solutions division opened its new customer Integration Center for partner business; Ingram Micro rolled out new partner-enablement tools including Partner Now, an online, on-demand business management portal for U.S. partners, and Partner Connect, a new software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based digital marketing program. Ingram Micro also announced a new private-cloud solution powered by CenturyLink.
Click through our gallery below for more highlights.
Nimesh Davé, executive VP, global cloud, kept Monday morning keynote attendees on their toes as he talked about all of the new investments Ingram Micro is making, particularly around intellectual property (IP), and what partners can do to take advantage new opportunities.
Paul Bay, executive vice president and group president, Americas, at Ingram Micro, opened the Day 2 general session and talked about digital transformation. He summed up his talk in one word: “partnership.”
Bay quoted IDC’s Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst: “We must move from a single-company mentality to a connected ecosystem approach to succeed in a DX economy.” The digital transformation is dependent upon a thriving ecosystem.
There were five zones in the Solutions Showcase — Zone 1: networking, security and wireless; Zone 2: DC/POS, printing and scanning; Zone 3: UCC, physical security and Pro AV; Zone 4: server, storage, IaaS, and power/backup; and Zone 5: desktops, notebooks and integrated solutions.
Tom Peters, speaker and author on business-management practices, paced the ballroom floor as he passionately addressed the audience on what he’s been hammering home for years: The basic drivers of all successful businesses throughout time are people, customers, action-execution, and the self-renewing entrepreneurial spirit.
There’s a lesson for partners in Sutton’s Law. When asked why he robs banks, Willy Sutton replied, “because that’s where the money is.”
While we don’t think of today’s bank robbers looking like Willy Sutton, we do think of them as sitting in dark rooms, their faces aglow and wearing hoodies. And they’re going after digital assets — or "where the money is." Ingram Micro’s Eric Kohl, vice president, advanced solutions, talked to attendees about cybersecurity and the huge opportunity for partners who invest in a security practice and becom a managed security service providers (MSSP).
IBM was one vendor on the show floor talking up its security strategy. The IBM Security Immune system offers a fully integrated approach to safeguarding an IT environment. It’s based on a three-pronged strategy: security transformation services; security operations and response; and information risk and protection.
In the SMB Alliance corner of the world, things got a bit "witchy."
In her keynote session – Thriving as a Trusted Service Provider – IDC’s Michelle Bailey, group vice president, general manager and research fellow, talked about the cloud as the long tail of services, noting that 80 percent of service-provider revenues are above infrastructure.
Partners visited Cisco, on the show floor, to learn more about how the vendor is making investments in five key areas for the secure, intelligent platform for digital business: power a multicloud world; reinvent the network; unlock the power of data; security is foundational; and create meaningful experiences.
Mark your calendar to make sure you have a spot at Ingram Micro One 2019, in Aurora, Colorado, at the Gaylord Rockies.
