Ingram Named BMC's First U.S. Distributor

Effective immediately, Ingram Micro will carry BMC's cloud-based Remedyforce Service Desk, as well as its sotware building blocks, including BMC BladeLogic Application Release Automation, BMC BladeLogic Network Automation, BMC BladeLogic for Client Automation and BMC Atrium Orchestrator.

"We're very excited to have this relationship with BMC. It's a fantastic endorsement of the channel and Ingram Micro's position to provide data center solutions into the market," said Scott Zahl, vice president and general manager of Ingram Micro's Advanced Computing Division.

BMC, a leader in the server and workload automation market, is looking to expand its channel with new partners for the Remedyforce product set, Zahl said.

"We both arrived with a recognition that there was an opportunity for both of us to wrap arms around if we worked at a partnership," he said. "We use their products internally. It was not a brand new relationship to us in that we've had ongoing dialogue. It was a timing issue. The market had moved with the advancement of our presence in the data center market and cloud services business. We have the skills and competencies in place. BMC is at a point where they're ready to expand their footprint in the channel"

The two companies have identified a subset of current BMC VARs that the developer will look to have sourced through Ingram Micro, mostly current Ingram customers, but the distributor will also look to recruit new BMC solution providers, Zahl said.

"There is a certification requirement and an on-boarding process we've used with other vendors in the past. We will look for partners with expertise in building out data center infrastructure and services expertise within our IMCloud environment. We'll show them how a BMC might help them extend their business," Zahl said. "We're looking as well for partners with a core practice in networking and how [BMC] can address other categories. We believe there's a multitude of unique VAR profiles to address how to solve a business issue or a customer business problem."

Bill Brandel, director of Ingram's Advanced Computing Division said the Remedyforce products were chosen because Ingram could make the most immediate impact selling those.

"The expansion of the product set [available through Ingram] should come rapidly once we recruit partners," Brandel said. "Today, we have outsourced help desk offerings but BMC gives us the first enterprise-class products to build your own help desk offerings. That's the direction partners were looking for us to offer and this gives us the ability to do that."

Ingram Micro will include BMC software in its Williamsville, N.Y., solution center, which solution providers can access onsite or remotely to test and build solutions.