Ingram Micro Looks to Expand SaaS Apps in the Channel

Ingram Micro today announced it is making it simpler for providers of software-as-a-service (SaaS) application of almost any size to participate in the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace.

Announced at the Ingram Micro ONE 2018 conference, the Ingram Micro Connect service allows SaaS application providers to automate the onboarding process associated with making their applications available via the distributor’s online marketplace.

At the same time, Ingram Micro also launched a Comet initiative designed to make it possible for smaller SaaS application providers to similarly participate on the Ingram Micro Marketplace. The Comet service is only available in the Middle East for now.

The overall goal is to make it possible for SaaS application providers to onboard themselves on to the marketplace in roughly four hours versus waiting days for Ingram Micro to manually process their application, says Nimesh Dave, executive vice president for global cloud at Ingram Micro.

Ingram Micro envisions there will soon be exponentially more SaaS application providers as it becomes simpler to turn intellectual property into application code that is exposed as a cloud service. In fact, Dave says Ingram Micro expects that roughly 10,0000 providers of SaaS applications will balloon to one million providers by 2028. Many of those providers will be channel partners that have developed intellectual property (IP) to the point where it can be employed as a SaaS application by other solution providers participating in the Ingram Micro Cloud marketplace, Dave told conference attendees.

“IP is going to everywhere and anywhere,” says Dave.

Ingram Micro claims the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace already generates over a billion of annual revenues generated by 80,000 partners that have 28 million seats under management.

There was a time not long ago when conventional wisdom held the rise of the cloud would disintermediate the channel. While there’s no doubt the way IT applications and services are consumed has changed utterly in the age of the cloud, it’s also apparent the channel continues to find ways to survive and thrive.