Ingram Adds To Managed Services For Seismic Partners

Seeking to drive more managed services business for its VAR partners and itself, distributor Ingram Micro (NYSE: IM) unveiled four new managed services at its Seismic Partner Conference this week in Dallas.

“Our managed services strategy is straightforward,” said Justin Crotty, vice president, services, Ingram Micro North America. “We are working hard to stay relevant to partners in the managed services space by improving what we think is the best aggregation of world-class services that partners can sell to their small and midsize-business customers.”

Crotty added that Ingram’s managed services business is very healthy. “We saw triple-digit growth in 2008 and are seeing triple-digit growth so far this year,” he said.

Ingram expects to see continued growth flowing from its new services -- Seismic Global NOC (network operations center), Seismic Instant Recovery On Demand by CA, Seismic Epicenter and Seismic Business Intelligence (BI) Dashboard.

The NOC service provides outsourced, global monitoring and management remediation, enabling partners to augment or replace their internal infrastructures while improving service levels.

Seismic Instant Recovery On Demand by CA is a business continuity service designed to provide small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with uninterrupted access to critical applications and data during a system failure, outage or disaster. Seismic Epicenter provides partners with a Web portal that allows them to access and manage all of their Seismic services from a single location.

The final tool, Seismic Business Intelligence Dashboard, enables partners using the Seismic RMM (remote monitoring and management) software to analyze their end-user installed base with a variety of performance indicators.

“The services will help VARs to earn higher margins, deliver enhanced client value and build a much more collaborative and profitable managed services practice,” said Crotty. “We host the services via third-parties so that partners can easily grow their businesses without having to introduce additional infrastructure or labor expenses.”

The services are only available to Seismic partners in the United States and Canada. “Ingram continues to make it more attractive and easier for us to scale our managed services business,” said Scott Spiro, CEO, Computer Solutions Group (CSG), a Seismic partner.

“The new services, particularly the Global NOC, will help us to win new customers who want the security of knowing their networks are monitored and managed 24X7,” said Spiro.

Managed services account for about 90 percent of CSG’s business and deliver average margins of 50 percent each, added Spiro.

“The margins on managed services are indeed very compelling – 50 to 65 percent,” said Patrick Ciccarelli, CEO of Varsity Technologies, another Seismic partner. Ingram makes it easier for us to build up our value-add, increase overall profitability, and establish a stronger go-to-market strategy, said Ciccarelli, noting that the Global NOC will open doors to new business.