PCR Tech and IT retail, distribution and vendor news
Irvine, California-based distributor Ingram Micro has launched a new software division as part of a ‘one-of-a-kind’ partnership with Microsoft.
Operating separately from Ingram Micro Cloud, CloudBlue is focused exclusively on selling the industry-leading CloudBlue commerce platform and services directly to service providers, including MSPs, telecommunications companies, large VARs and other distributors.
A significant endorsement endorsement of the platform has come from Microsoft, who has announced that it will co-sell the CloudBlue commerce platform to new service providers joining Microsoft’s Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program, and the CloudBlue platform will operate on Microsoft Azure.
The CloudBlue commerce platform enables service providers of any size and a wide variety of business models to automate, aggregate and monetise their own cloud and digital services as well as those from third-parties. CloudBlue also enables ISVs to take their offerings to market almost instantly across the entire multi-service provider ecosystem with the company’s industry-leading cloud commerce and anything-as-a-service (XaaS) platform.
Unveiled at Ingram Micro’s 9th annual Cloud Summit, CloudBlue combines the near decade of investment and expertise with the intellectual property and software assets from six different Ingram Micro acquisitions including, Odin Automation Platform and Ensim Automation Suite. With hundreds of professionals from engineering, product management, operations, marketing and sales, CloudBlue today manages more than 27 million enterprise cloud subscriptions globally and is primed to experience a record year of innovation and growth.
“Creating a dedicated and independent CloudBlue division enables us to accelerate our focus on helping service providers succeed in the as-a-service, cloud-first economy,” said Nimesh Davé, executive vice president Global Cloud at Ingram Micro. “More and more businesses are experiencing a breaking point in the digital modernisation of their organisations and need a flexible and secure platform to sell and scale their cloud offerings while delivering an exceptional service experience.”
At the core of the CloudBlue ecosystem, is its proprietary API technology, APS, which customers can use to immediately connect to CloudBlue’s vast network of vendor solutions, enabling them to offer these vendor solutions in conjunction with their own core services quickly and easily. CloudBlue provides a single entry point to an ecosystem of the world’s most innovative ISVs, including more than 200 pre-integrated solutions from Microsoft, Dropbox, DocuSign, IBM, Cisco, Symantec and many more.
Richard Dufty, senior vice president of CloudBlue, will lead the sales, support and service for the new CloudBlue division. “The launch of CloudBlue is instrumental to the ongoing success of our customers and partners and clearly positions us as a business platform leader and technology innovator in our industry,” said Dufty. “CloudBlue stands alone in its proven ability to deliver scalable and secure technology, access to an infinite ecosystem of providers, and go-to-market and enablement services. By providing these resources and capabilities to our customers, we are removing the barriers to entry and growing pains organizations have historically faced when launching, scaling, and managing cloud businesses and services.”
If the CloudBlue name sounds familiar to you, it’s because it was actually a company that Ingram bought back in October 2013 for an undisclosed sum. While the name may be the same, the function is actually vastly different. While CloudBlue in 2018 is a commerce platform, the company acquired by Ingram was a self-described ‘global provider of enterprise IT asset disposition, onsite data destruction and e-waste recycling services’ i.e. they recycled hardware.
Just goes to show that even though your company might be gobbled up by a big corporation, you could always find the name popping up again years later in a vastly different form.
