Ingram Adds Licenses To ISV Program

Ingram Micro has had an informal program for several months helping ISVs reach solution providers through a referral process. Now the Santa Ana, Calif.-based distributor also wants to sell licenses to solution providers, said Justin Crotty, vice president of channel development at Ingram Micro.

"Our goal is to help our VARs complement the technologies they sell with the right applications for a particular solution and to help them navigate the crowded ISV space," Crotty said.

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

Ingram Micro prefers to sell licenses, but will continue to refer ISVs to resellers 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," 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," 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 enterprise market directly and want to reach the SMB market.

"We were shocked to find that many people thought scanning to a PDF was an end-to-end document-management solution. Ingram brought to us how to get that education out there," said Andre Pavlovic, executive vice president and COO of Questys. Stafford Associates, a Setauket, N.Y.-based network integrator, has closed two document-imaging deals with Questys through Ingram Micro, said Amit Patney, corporate sales consultant at Stafford Associates.

"We don't have much experience with document management, but we had a couple clients interested in that solution. They planned the whole solution for us in conjunction with Questys," Patney said.