Ingram Micro Cloud Partners: Cloud or Bust
Richard Dufty, senior vice president, worldwide sales, services & support, Ingram Micro Cloud, and Tim FitzGerald, vice president, cloud channel sales, are about four months into their respective positions at the distribution company. Dufty spent the last five years at AppDirect, most recently as senior vice president, worldwide sales, and prior to that was with Symantec for about eight years. Fitzgerald was a long-time executive at distribution competitor Avnet Technology Solutions, recently acquired by Tech Data. Fitzgerald was vice president of digital transformation at Tech Data for five months before jumping ship to Ingram Micro.
Channel Partners sat down with Dufty and FitzGerald, while at Ingram Micro One this week in Dallas, to talk about their roles, Ingram Micro Cloud, and objectives for 2018.
Channel Partners: Why two new hires at Ingram Micro Cloud?
Tim FitzGerald: From my vantage point, Ingram was clearly selling platforms and cloud services in North America, historically, but I think there was an opportunity to bring in a fresh set of eyes and experience in both areas, that we could both help with.
Ingram Micro Cloud’s Richard Dufty
Richard Dufty: Look at it like a traditional startup — they start and then hit scale, at which time you have different people leave or come in, and our CEO Alain Monie decided that they want to double down and expand the cloud business, and to bring in fresh eyes and experience.
As you sit back and look at it, there’s no one out there that can do and provide the value that Ingram Micro Cloud is providing. For me, it was a big decision to leave AppDirect and come to Ingram, but I have a personal commitment to help the industry move to the cloud. When I looked at what Ingram was doing from technology, reach, from the investments they made, it was an exciting value proposition.
CP: What is each of you responsible for?
TF: I own what Ingram calls the cloud channel for North America, which is essentially the sale of cloud solutions to a traditional partner population, i.e. VARs, SIs, MSPs, that ilk of partners.
Ingram Micro Cloud’s Tim FitzGerald
RD: I lead our worldwide platform and enterprise business, and what that essentially means is that one is an indirect motion and one is more [of] a direct motion, and in neither do we sell to the end user. The marketplace that Tim is responsible for in North America is our Ingram Micro Channel Marketplace. It’s built on our platform — the Odin platform. We also provide that platform to 250 service providers around the world, including some of our competitors. We provide the platform and power to four or five very fast-growing distribution companies around the world, such as Insight and CDW, so that’s the differences in the businesses.
CP: What’s your message to partners about Ingram’s cloud business?
TF: A couple of things. If you look at all the points of differentiation that Ingram represents in the cloud, the value proposition, it’s a tremendous time if you’re a partner and you’re not in the cloud game to leverage the efficiency that Ingram brings to the table to help you get in the game; and, to develop a …
