Ingram Micro Rolls Out Professional Services Platform For North American Partners

The platform, which is segmented into four key categories of planning, implementation, management and support, addresses a lengthy list of professional services, such as application development, integration, data migration services, assessment services, remote service delivery, installation and break/fix.

"Installation and break/fix were part of the earlier program," said Jason Bystrak, director of sales at Ingram Micro Services Division, North America, told CRN. "We're now adding a lot of other services to the mix and opening the venue to 30,000 partners in North America who can now go to the platform and connect on pro services opportunities. We're also going to be marketing around the awareness of these engagements in order to drive more demand."

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The service, which is available free of charge, involved a substantial vetting process to ensure the expertise of the service suppliers, according to Bystrak. Since many of the suppliers are also VARs and integrators, no-compete and confidentiality agreements are required in order to protect the legacy partner who is commissioning the services.

"IM Link is IMSN on steroids," added Bystrak. "We've taken all the lessons learned from the previous program and used them to develop a much more extensive offering that has all the features that are needed by partners on both sides of the transaction."

Features include support for searches, project workflow management and the financial transactions, themselves.

Ingram Micro channel partners can also use IM Link to fulfill specific projects, deploy regional or national rollouts and facilitate ongoing service agreements.

The platform is currently being demonstrated at Ingram Micro's 2013 Cloud Summit, which is under way this week in Phoenix, Ariz.

PUBLISHED APRIL 8, 2013