Ingram Teams Up With Alvaka For MSP Offering

The deal makes available to Ingram resellers Alvaka&s Advanced Network Management Services, a suite of MSP offerings that includes performance monitoring for servers and applications, storage and tape backup management, firewall and network appliances management, patch management, hosted e-mail, spam filtering and virus protection, according to Alvaka CEO Oli Thordarson.

The arrangement can ease the transition for VARs looking to add managed services, and the reccurring revenue those services bring, Thordarson said.

Ingram partners participating in the MSP offering will have access to extended lines of credit to enable partners to massage the cost of hardware and software sales into long-term payment plans. Alvaka will apply its 12 years of MSP experience to assisting Ingram with the language of MSP contracts, Thordarson said.

The appeal of the Ingram-Alvaka deal is that the MSP services being piped in are that of a solution provider not a vendor, Thordarson said. “We are not a hardware and software vendor so we are not threatening to their existing product sales business,” he said.

“Alvaka will be aiding the building of the reseller relationship with the client, unlike IBM, that is getting in the way by providing a bunch of services the reseller already provides,” he added.

Fernando Lara, CEO of Singular Security, a Tustin, Calif.-based solution provider and Ingram partner, said he&s in the process of adding the new MSP services for Singular&s midmarket customers. Singular&s aim is to create and support business continuity schemes for midmarket customers that typically don&t have a permanent in-house IT manager, he said. This makes managed services a perfect fit for Singular.

Lara spent time considering other MSP platforms that he would have purchased outright, but what attracted Lara to the Ingram-Alvaka offering was the fact that the MSP services were that of a fellow solution provider. “What we really needed was someone who understood the customer,” he said.

The move gives Ingram resellers a fast track to becoming an MSP, something the distributor has been encouraging its partners to do. Case in point: In September, Ingram hand-picked the new president of its VentureTech Network: Scott Goemmel, executive vice president of PMV Technologies, a successful MSP in Troy, Mich. Ingram wants to get the word out to more solution providers that managed services are where it&s at, hence Goemmel&s appointment.

Ingram partners should see a 10 percent margin, which they can further mark up, Alvaka executives said.