Enterprise Deployment Hits Light Speed With HPE Smart Choice and Xvantage
Delivering IT solutions continues to evolve, and distributors are rising to the challenge that solution providers are facing. Everything from quoting, buying and deployment must be done quickly to stay ahead of the competition. To keep up with demand for enterprise level solutions, Ingram Micro has embraced HPE Smart Choice, which has drastically cut down the time traditional CTO motions have taken in the past.
“With the Smart Choice program, you have a partner with the ability to put pricing at the end client within minutes and ultimately deploy the solution to the end client within two to three business days,” states Jamie Ferullo, the executive director for advanced solutions in Ingram Micro’s HPE business unit. “It has dramatically improved and accelerated the speed to market.”
This results in potentially weeks of work saved. HPE Smart Choice does this by using pre-configured compute and storage solutions, which keeps inventory high and lets solution providers deploy enterprise level solutions fast to a wide variety of end customers.
While Smart Choice is an enterprise level solution, it’s positioned primarily as an SMB option that provides both firepower and flexibility. “There's still a lot of long-tail business and a lot of small to mid-sized businesses that you're not talking about terabytes or data centers,” Ferullo described. “It could be a single server or two opportunity. When you're looking at the velocity and the scale within the small to mid-size business, there's still the customization to match the workload requirements at the end client.”
But when it comes to their own internal motions, Ingram Micro has an ace up their sleeve with their AI powered Xvantage platform. Ferullo describes Xvantage as a B2C style experience in a complex B2B environment that can help partners see new opportunities. "Our AI powered Xvantage platform can really help deliver a customized unique user experience. When you look at that coupled with the HPE Smart Choice program, trying to provide intelligent add-on recommendations for the partners to expand the market opportunities. And that's all based on the data insights.”
HPE Smart Choice and Ingram Micro’s Xvantage are helping take away the friction of quoting, buying and deploying. This means businesses can focus resources on where it matters most for them.