Ingram Micro Canada kicks off its Platform 2012 tour with a stop in Vancouver next Wednesday, March 21.

One of the distributor’s key marketing events of the year, Ingram has this year overhauled the format to create an event that will generate more value for a larger range of resellers and vendors, said David Mason, vice president of sales at Ingram Micro Canada.

In previous years, the distributor has run a series of smaller, specialist roadshow events – Connex focused on digital technologies; Government Alliance focused on public sector; and a system-builder focused event. This year’s Platform events bring those topics, and more, together under the same roof.

“We think there’s a lot of synergy for both resellers and vendors to work with Ingram Micro to hit the most vertical markets and the most diverse vendor and customer sets in Canada,” Mason said.

The distributor’s taking a “little bit of everything for everyone” approach, hoping to allow attendees to strengthen their core businesses with familiar topics, while also being exposed to new names and new ideas that may bring with them future opportunities.

“Look at a traditional system builder,” Mason said. “They’ve done it for a number ofyears, and they’re good at it. But they’re probably really interested in some of our core VAR programs as well, or in networking, virtualization or cloud [which will be major topics at the Vancouver event.] Or in Data capture/Point-of-sale. It makes sense a lot of sense to bring it all together.”

With cloud such a hot topic, and the distributor’s own Ingram Cloud division being such an important focus for Ingram worldwide, the Cloud team will have a major presence at the show. Mason said that the team will definitely be there, and Ingram Cloud North American leader Renée Bergeron is expected to be in attendance.

“We’re going to be very front-and-centre [with Ingram Cloud] to ensure that partners really understand the opportunity,” Mason said.

The company lists some 25 vendors (see the list at the end of the article) as sponsors of the event, along with its own Ingram Micro Services division as the 26th. So clearly there are a variety of angles being covered. Along with the aforementioned markets and businesses, Ingram Micro intends to use the event to shine some attention on its nascent physical security division.

The event will also feature a lot of opportunities for reseller facetime with the distributor’s executive team. Both Mason and Canadian GM Mark Snider will be on hand, with plans to meet with as many of the 145 VARs expected to attend as possible. Platform will also feature an executive dinner and roundtable for top partners as a learning and networking opportunity, and of course a general technology fair.

After kicking off in Vancouver next week, the Platform tour comes to Toronto’s Woodbine Racetrack next month, stops in Calgary, Edmonton in Montreal in May, and Halifax in June. Then it picks up again in the fall, with stops in Quebec City in September and Ottawa in November.

Full list of sponsors for Platform 2012

(courtesy Ingram Micro Canada)

• AMD
• APC
• Avaya
• Cables to Go
• Cisco
• Comtrol
• CyberPower
• Dymo
• Epson
• IBM
• Ingram Micro Services
• Intel
• Kingston
• Liebert
• Logitech
• Microsoft OEM + Hardware
• Optoma
• PNY
• RIM
• Siig
• Symantec
• Toshiba
• TP-Link
• Trendnet
• WASP
• Western Digital