Ingram Micro to Broker ASP Deals for Resellers

Leading technology distributor Ingram Micro Inc announced its entry into the ASP market on Monday (Nov 20th), unveiling its plan to act as a matchmaker between ASP vendors and resellers.

Initially available in the first half of 2001 to a limited group of Sun, Cisco and Citrix-authorized technology solution providers, Ingram’s ASP offering will feature a portfolio of ASP applications and services provided by ASPs, application infrastructure providers (ASPs) and Internet service providers (ISPs). Ingram will add training and technical support resources, and will act as a broker between service providers and technology solution providers, allowing the resellers to become ASPs without having to invest in their own infrastructure for application hosting and delivery.

“We wanted to package up these services and resell them so that VARs and ASPs could sell them into the SME (small and midsize enterprise) marketplace,” VP of business development Pamela Bryson told ASPnews.com in a briefing last week.

Ingram is offering a range of participation options, depending on the technology expertise and inclination of the solution provider. They will range from simply acting as a sales agent for the ASP service through to outsourcing infrastructure services for the reseller’s own portfolio offerings.

Ingram announced three provider partners this week, illustrating the range of services to be offered. They are application infrastructure provider Exenet Technologies Inc, longstanding ASP FutureLink Corp and ASP aggregator Wizmo Inc.

Later, the distributor will open out the scheme to all of the 10,000-plus solution providers that make up its customer base.

Ingram will not be hosting the applications itself, restricting its involvement to training, partnering, and providing an infrastructure for managing transactions. “Our strategy is bringing all the right partners together to provide the right solution for the end customer,” summarised Bryson.

Ingram Micro’s role in the ASP distribution channel will be analysed in the December issue of ASP News Review.