Ingram Micro extends AWS relationship to cover UK&I

Ingram Micro has expanded its existing relationship with AWS in the US to roll out the public cloud giant's services to resellers in the UK and Ireland.

Ingram has been offering Amazon Web Services on its Cloud Marketplace in the US for the last seven years but the distributor has recently extended the countries it delivers AWS to also include Canada, the Middle East and Spain as it deepens its involvement with the cloud player.

Ingram has been increasing the support it can provide for those resellers looking to sell Infrastructure as a Service and saw the AWS expansion as one coming at the right time.

“We are excited to be launching AWS in the UK. Over the last few years we have been making substantial investments into our IaaS capabilities, by expanding our team of Solution Architects, IaaS Specialist Pre-Sales Consultants and our Ingram Micro Services team," said Matt Sanderson, UKI managing director at Ingram Micro.

"With the addition of AWS to our portfolio, we can offer our depth and scale partners an even more complete suite of cloud offerings, and the technical support behind it, to ensure that they can deliver transformative cloud services to their customers,” he added.

The distie has got a number of its own staff through the AWS training to reach solutions architect associate status to be in a better position supporting resellers.

"We are now AWS-ready with both pre-sales and post-sales skills which means we can now offer our partners true multi-cloud services and support enabling choice and flexibility for their end users," said Ingram services director Simon Day.

At the same time Ingram has also revealed it is looking to highlight the best local B2B startup companies through the UK Comet Competition, which will see winners go through with a chance to land a $1m go-to-market funding prize.

The contest is aimed at software developers and evaluates them on a number of criteria including future vision, potential in the channel and ecosystem readiness.

Scott Murphy, director of Cloud UK&I, Ingram Micro, said that he was happy to be involved with something that identified the next wave of innovative ISVs.

"I’m anticipating the biggest competition of its kind, and I’m proud that Ingram Micro Cloud is very much at the forefront of this new pathway to discovering new talent in the technology industry. We’re looking to drive deeper relationships for our partners by creating an outlet for finding new best of breed technology solutions," he said.

Hosted in Manchester on the 15-16 October, applications are open now, and the UK will produce three runners-up and a finalist, with the UK winner continuing on to the global Comet Competition final in Miami 2020.