Ingram Micro Expands ISV Program

Ingram Micro has had an informal ISV program for several months in which it helped ISVs reach solution providers through a referral process. Now the Santa Ana, Calif.-based distributor may take title to the licenses and resell them to solution providers, said Justin Crotty, vice president of channel development at Ingram Micro.

"Traditionally our program has been focused on smaller niche ISVs, small application developers looking for a channel strategy. We were well positioned to get them in and help them understand how the channel works," Crotty said. "Now all our vendors have ISVs they are interested in promoting. We are expanding the portfolio that vendors are bringing to the table. We're also expanding to larger ISV players. Our overall goal is to help our VARs complement the technologies they sell with the right applications for that particular solution and to help them navigate the crowded ISV space. If you want a Cisco IP Call Manager Express ISV, that can be a daunting search."

Thus far, manufacturers such as IBM and Cisco Systems have been particularly interested in bringing their ISV partners to the channel through Ingram Micro, Crotty said.

"IBM has an extensive portfolio of ISVs across a number of partners, so does Cisco. We're also working with Microsoft. That's a larger universe of ISVs. The discussion is how do we target specific ISVs," Crotty said.

Ingram Micro prefers to sell the licenses, but will also refer ISVs to solution providers for a fee, Crotty said. "It depends on the [ISV's] capability to transact distribution business. Licenses are cleaner. [Referrals] are more laborious on the transaction side, but it depends on what they want to do," he said.

One of those ISVs, Denver-based Integrated Research, is a Cisco partner looking to Ingram Micro to develop its channel, said Jeff Barenz, national channel manager, distribution, for Integrated Research.

"We're not looking to distribution for fulfillment. That helps, but it's not the primary reason," Barenz said. "We're getting solution providers introduced to our line card and looking for Ingram Micro to segue us into their line card."

Other ISVs such as Questys Solutions, Mission Viejo, Calif., have traditionally served the enteprise market directly and are looking to the channel to reach the SMB market.

"One of the key things we needed was education. How do you get that education from Questys itself to the reseller base. Ingram's ISV program was a marketing machine we had to accomplish that," said Andre Pavlovic, executive vice president and COO of Questys. "We were shocked to found that many people thought scanning to a PDF was an end to end document management solution. Ingram brought to us to get that education out there. Putting together a long-term [channel] strategy can be only achieved with a company like Ingram."