Ingram Micro Shows Off Technologies Of Tomorrow

For the first time, Ingram Micro showcased multi-vendor solutions at the technology fair of its VentureTech Network Spring Invitational conference in New Orleans. The distributor had pavilions for four solutions: unified communications, data capture/point of sale, digital signage and data protection. Manning the booths with experts from its own solutions centers in Santa Ana, Calif., and Williamsville, N.Y. Kirk Robinson, vice president of channel marketing, North America, said Ingram Micro is using this event as a pilot and hopes to show many more solutions at its Fall invitational in San Diego.

Chris Butler, vice president of consulting services at Northwest Computer Support (right), a Tukwila, Wash.-based solution provider, chats with David Hettrick, a technical support engineer for Ingram Micro about the unified communications solutions.

"[Showing multi-vendor solutions] is beneficial for selling to SMB. We rely on multi-vendor solutions. With individual booths, you don't get to see the big picture," Butler said.

The distributor was showing a Polycom USB phone hooked up to a Hewlett-Packard notebook, as well as a Cisco hard phone, a Cisco soft phone and products from Cisco's Unified Communications 500 series.

Daryl Schuster, business development manager within Ingram Micro's data capture/POS division (left), talks point of sale with Marcia Jones, sales manager at Renick Corp., a Houston-based solution provider. Renick said one of her clients, a restaurant chain, needs a POS solution and she was scoping out possible offerings.

Ingram Micro's Jay Giron, a technical support engineer with Ingram's data capture/POS dievision, shows off an HP POS solution that included a cash drawer, rp5700 PC and receipt printer by the vendor, as well as an touchscreen display by ELO TouchSystems, a scanner by Metrologic and a PIN pad by Ingenico.

Jim Perrier, president of Universal Data, a New Orleans-based VAR (right), inquires about digital signage solutions with Ingram Micro staff. "This gives us a real opportunity to see the whole solution in a short amount of time," Perrier said of the multi-vendor booth. "We're trying to figure out whether digital signage fits in with our business and what we would be able to support."

In addition to the solutions on hand, Ingram Micro was trying to drum up support for its solutions centers, where VARs can build and test multi-vendor solutions and also bring in customers to demonstrate the solutions.

An NEC monitor displays a Web-based content management application by Rise Vision, which incorporates real-time news and scores, along with customized content for individual customers.

Ted Wiseman, a channel account consultant for Hitachi Data Systems (left), and Akbar Fazli, a solutions center engineer for Ingram Micro, were on hand to answer questions about data protection. The distributor demonstrated solutions that included Hitachi, HP and Cisco products.

"It all ties into how protection doesn't just use hardware or software by itself," Fazli said.