Ingram Micro EVP: Consumption, Flows And Security Will Drive Business Buying Behavior

Ingram Micro's Nimesh Dave said clients would soon move away from owning assets in favor of on-demand services while doubling down on data security.

The Irvine, Calif.-based distributor said widespread participation in cloud underpins the move toward a consumption-based economy and flows of information and commerce. The embrace of cloud computing – a $216 billion industry expected to grow by $140 billion this year – has created more applications for software and platforms, according to Dave, Ingram Micro's executive vice president of global cloud.

"Cloud will create infinite possibilities," Dave said Friday during Ingram Micro Cloud Summit 2017. "It will solve things we've never been able to solve before at a pace that is unprecedented."

[RELATED: Ingram Micro Cloud Execs: Large Infrastructure-as-a-Service Deals Have Finally Arrived in the Channel]

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Businesses and consumers now operate in a mindset where they opt to fractionally use and reshare rather than buying outright, Dave told more than 1,300 Cloud Summit attendees at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa in Phoenix.

An example, Dave pointed to generational differences around automobile ownership, with millennials preferring to use cars as needed for a service rather than having to be responsible for insurance payments and upkeep. The mainstreaming of autonomous cars will make it even easier for people to use cars without owning them, Dave said.

"We will see within the next five years unprecedented amounts of capital and money freed up to be used in other places," Dave said. "Sharing will mean everything."

Clients of MicroAge tend to be most interested in consumption-based models around Infrastructure-as-a-Service as well as backup and disaster recovery, according to Wyatt Bowman, director of technical sales and professional services for the Tempe, Ariz.-based Ingram Micro partner, No. 161 on the CRN Solution Provider 500.

Customers enjoy having access to storage on-demand, Bowman said, and often seek to protect their data by having it housed in multiple locations.

Solution providers also tend to think of their engagements with customers as buy-and-sell transactions, Dave said. But Dave said the future of the market would be around flows of information and commerce.

Blue Apron is an example of a flow-based service, Dave said, with meals arriving each week at the front door of subscribers with all the ingredients they need and absolutely no waste. Flows tend to be stickier than transactions, Dave said, meaning they can be bent but are rarely stopped outright unless the channel partner does something extremely intrusive.

"In these flows, you keep what you want, and discard the things you don't need," Dave said. "Things are changing rapidly."

Flow-based professional and managed services have become increasingly popular around cloud, Bowman said, particularly as it relates to management and monitoring.

The embrace of consumption and flows means that bad actors will forgo stealing physical goods and will target personal or corporate data, Dave said. Cybersecurity is expected to be a $1 trillion market and will be driven by ransomware, Dave said, meaning the hacker will take data ransom, encrypt it and refuse to return it until the victim pays up.

"If you're not using cloud backups to back up your clouds, make sure you use them," Dave said. "You still need to back your data up somewhere else. Otherwise, you can't leave."

Another emerging threat is cyber warfare, which Dave said are pre-planned, pre-programmed attacks to go after government entities such as what the Democrats might have been subject to during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Security has risen to the top of the food chain in terms of what C-suite executives expect from a solution provider, Bowman said. MicroAge's clients tend to be particularly interested in protecting their data and security around their servers, Bowman said.

"Cloud technology, with ubiquitous access to everything we need, will change things permanently," Dave said. "It is doing something significant to the way we work and the way we behave."