PHOENIX – At its annual Cloud Summit here, Ingram Micro announced a pair of new cloud-centric services offerings and new programs in its cloud lineup.

The distributor has been rapidly expanding its services offerings, and the launch of the Ingram Micro Service Desk is a big part of that. Under the Service Desk, coming out of its acquisition of Toronto-based Softcom, the distributor is offering partners level 1 support for their customers, broadly covering IT help desk support for solution providers who don’t want to do it themselves.

Under the program, solution providers can pick and choose service level requirements as needed to “fill their gaps and take end user calls,” said Jason Bystrak, executive director of cloud for Ingram Micro North America. Solution providers can choose options including 7/24 support or 5/8 support, with options for support out of Toronto, Manila or Sofia, Bulgaria at various price points. Service Desk is staffed by Ingram associates but is delivered white label under the partner’s brand. Although Service Desk isn’t directly tied to cloud services, having a service desk goes a long way in building out a cloud practice, Bystrak said.

“One of the things that slows partners down is that when you start to put your technology on the cloud, someone’s got to take those calls, and in a lot of cases, they either don’t have the capability or don’t have it in the scale they need,” he said.

Service Desk features two-way integration with two of the largest Professional Service Automation packages, Autotask and ConnectWise, allowing Ingram to push tickets back to the partner for Level 2 support, or allows partners to open a ticket for Service Desk to act on.

Service Desk is available now to Ingram’s U.S. customer base, and will launch for Canadian solution providers, “in a matter of weeks,” Bystrak said.

The company also expanded its Cloud Ignite Services program, under which it helps partners to design and configure applications solution providers are selling from Ingram’s Cloud Marketplace site. Cloud Ignite also covers data migration projects for solution providers whose customer are headed to the cloud.

“We can help them design the right cloud solution and do the implementation,” Bystrak said. “Anything they need to add value for our channel partners and fill their gaps.”

While all of the above project-based services are available on a for-fee basis, Cloud Ignite also covers free Level 2 services for all Cloud Marketplace solutions.

The distributor also expanded the role of Ingram Micro Cloud Elevate, its partner loyalty program for its cloud business. Introduced at least year’s Cloud Summit, Cloud Elevate initially included credit for solution providers to use Ingram-offered services for free, but has now been expanded to include cloud-focused enablement, education, and marketing. Ingram Micro global cloud boss Renee Bergeron announced at the event that partners who sign up for Cloud Elevate by the end of March will get $150 in Cloud Marketplace credit to be used when provisioning any Ingram Micro solution over the next six months.

“Go and experiment with our Marketplace at our expense,” Bergeron told attendees.