Ingram Micro’s Canada’s Canadian cloud sales resources increase by three more to a total of eight, up from two at the beginning of the year.
Jason Bystrak, Executive Director for Ingram Micro Cloud for The Americas.
HOLLYWOOD FLA – Distributor Ingram Micro is in attendance at the CompTIA ChannelCon event here in south Florida. But it is also making news in its cloud business far to the north, in Canada.
“There’s a lot going on up there in Canada, said Jason Bystrak, Executive Director for Ingram Micro Cloud for the Americas. “Things are happening in three areas around platform, product, and people.”
The biggest changes are around people, continuing a steady pattern that has been evident since before the distributor’s cloud summit in April. In late March they announced that they were expanding Canadian cloud sales resources from two to four. Shortly afterwards, at Cloud Summit itself, Greg Onoprijenko, who as the founder and president of E-ternity Business Continuity Consultants had been a long-time Ingram Micro partner around cloud, was named as Ingram Micro Canada’s first director of cloud.
“Greg was a natural choice when we decided to create this role,” Bystrak said. “He had been part of our cloud advisory council years. We have now doubled the size of the Canadian sales team under his leadership, going from two cloud sales people at the beginning of the year, up to eight.”
The plan to augment the cloud sales force with three additional people was confirmed last Friday, and is specifically tied to dedicated work with Microsoft. They will be based in Mississauga.
“These new resources supporting the cloud in Canada now mean we have a total of eight dedicated sales resources helping our Canadian partners,” Bystrak said.
The platform enhancements refer to the recent expansion of Ingram’s cloud marketplace and the new version of their Odin Service Automation platform that was announced at Microsoft WPC.
“Odin Automation Essentials is a partner package that partners can host themselves, but where they transact with the vendor,” Bystrak said. “It’s mainly for Microsoft partners who use it to bundle Office 365 in with their own products.”
On the product front specific to Canada, Bystrak noted that they are seeing strong momentum around Dropbox.
“Dropbox is live with us in Canada, and we are really starting to see them take off,” Bystrak said. “What’s interesting about them is that they have that massive install base, and their technology ties in well with what we are doing with our platform. They are a very good partner because are now so invested in the channel. That’s how they plan to monetize their freemium customers.”
