Ingram UK to Rise cloud aggregation
Distie Ingram Micro has signed an agreement with cloud provider Rise to deliver a portfolio of aggregated cloud and hosted services to its UK resellers.
Rise, an offshoot of web hosting company Fasthosts, launched in April to offer pay-as-you-go services around a range of “themed servers” including backup, disaster recovery, ecommerce and collaboration software. With a focus on the Microsoft virtualisation and product stack, Rise will also provide cloud versions of Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Dynamics software as part of the agreement.
“The collaboration between the two companies means that we can now provide all application and infrastructure deployment options from on-premise through to hosted, private cloud and SaaS under one roof,” explains Matt Sanderson, managing director at Ingram Micro. Sanderson believes that its strategy to deliver comprehensive aggregation of cloud services will enable its partners to build viable service practices while providing recurring revenue streams.
Ingram UK’s cloud strategy has lagged behind its bigger US parent which already offers aggregated cloud services including security from Trend Micro, IAAS from IBM, helpdesk from Kaseya and a backup service from Symantec.
The partnership with Rise in the UK will allow Ingram UK to effectively deliver a basic portfolio but without key cloud-based security or helpdesk offerings which are likely to follow. One new offering is the managed firewall service from Rise, although this is limited to just the Cisco ASA 5500 series.
According to a recent report by IDC, the combined spending for public and private cloud storage could reach $22.6bn worldwide in the next couple years. Overall, IDC predicts that spending by public cloud providers on storage hardware, software, and services will grow annually from 23 to 29 percent through 2015.
