Ingram Micro Launches Infrastructure Solutions Division

The Infrastructure Technology Solutions (ITS) division will focus on blades, servers, networked storage and other infrastructure-related products and technology, including virtualization, for businesses with less than 1,000 users. Technologies from vendors like IBM, Hewlett-packard and VMware will be highlighted, Ingram Micro said.

ITS will have about 100 dedicated staffers, including marketing development specialists, vendor managers and about 60 sales reps. Ingram Micro said its 160 technical support personnel will be trained on the infrastructure solutions that the division will create and promote.

Keith Bradley, president of Ingram Micro North America, said the new division reflects the Santa Ana, Calif.-based distributor's efforts to reach new markets.

"We feel this is absolutely the right time to make an incremental investment to create organic divisions that will have dedicated sales resources and marketing resources," Bradley said. "We'll be educating the VAR on the opportunity -- on how to make the sale [and] then service it once it goes live. We're taking the complexity and making it very simple for them."

Ingram Micro named Scott Look as vice president of ITS for North America. Look formerly was in charge of distributor Avnet's EMC relationship.

"I think that will put us in good stead with EMC as we continue to expand the division as well," Bradley said.

ITS will zero in on midsize companies, he noted. "We do not want to go after the 1,000 seats-and-above end-user market. That's clearly served very well by the Arrows and the Avnets of the world. That's no criticism of the two big guys in the space. It's just not economical for them to go out after the 1,000 seats and below [companies]," he said.

Ingram Micro will help VARs target customers ready for networked storage and infrastructure solutions and bring them to higher-end vendors like HP and IBM, enabling those partners to go up-market from the small-business space, according to Bradley.

"We're working out which end users are out there that are buying technology minus one -- the generation just before they get into their first server/storage area," he said. "What are they using just before they get into virtualization? We're able to look at that, crunch a bunch of data, take it back to the vendors that serve this market and clearly show them that we've got thousands of customers, thousands of end users and VARs that could use their technology but don't know about it."

Sam Haffar, president and co-CEO of CompuTex, a Houston-based HP solution provider, said he thinks the new division is a good move for Ingram Micro and will bring the distributor into competition with enterprise distributors Arrow and Avnet.

"It elevates [Ingram's] whole position in the enterprise space. They've been playing in this space. Now it formalizes the program. They've put a lot more resources behind it as well to capture more business. I think they'll do really well," Haffar said.

"We play in the mid-to-large segment of the market, and we're already using them as a distributor. I think it will help them capture the business of other VARs out there that looked to Ingram as a broadline distributor, but now they'll start looking at them as a great resource for the enterprise business, everything that plays in the data center."