WASHINGTON, DC -- Ingram Micro CEO Paul Bay said the complexity of today’s technology – particularly around AI – provides an unprecedented opportunity for channel partners to stand out as trusted advisors.
“There's no better time, in my opinion, to be in this industry,” Bay said Monday during his keynote on the opening day of the Ingram Micro One conference. “Right now, we sit in the middle of a $5 trillion global ecosystem, and the opportunity we have is unlimited. Why? Because there's so much complexity. All of you are the trusted advisors for the millions of end businesses you're serving each and every day, driving through that complexity and focusing on what the business outcomes are available.”
Distributor Ingram Micro has tools to help MSPs bring AI to customers, such as its Micro Xvantage AI Factory that uses Google’s Gemini large language models and the Enable AI partner program to help sell AI. Bay suggested partners should use those to incorporate AI internally and become experts before selling it to customers.
“Being a trusted advisor takes extreme leadership, and I think courage, too,” he said. “Your clients ultimately see your value and what your expertise is as the opportunity. They don't care about the technology. What they really care about is what's the business outcome that you're trying to solve for them.”
Ingram Micro CEO Paul Bay
He highlighted four key areas where partners can help their end customers most: services, operational efficiency, AI and cybersecurity. And Ingram Micro can help MSPs most by improving speed, scale and service.
“It's really how you can solve those business problems,” Bay said. “We look at this as kind of a three-part kind of equation. Speed is around taking friction out of it, being internally focused and making sure that we're doing what we can to reduce the cost to serve to free up time. We define scale as go-to-market. How do we free up our resources and continue to have different conversations with all of you to make sure we understand what your goals and objectives are so we can make sure that we're meeting them? Service is ultimately about how we can take the data and the insights and connect them together.”
Ingram Micro last week introduced its Sales Briefing Assistant agent that it built using Gemini models. The AI-powered digital sales companion synthesizes real-time, context-aware market insights, sales signals and recommendations into a brief for Ingram Micro’s sales teams.
Also last week, the distributor reported $12.6 billion in revenue last quarter, which represented a 7.2% year-over-year increase and produced an $870 million profit. Bay said the AI Factory was a “growth engine and learning platform” that is helping Ingram Micro increase sales.
“The AI Factory allows us to design integrated solutions that bring together AI, cybersecurity and cloud, which is crucial because collaboration across the ecosystem is critical to unlocking AI's full potential,” he said. “Many of our vendor partners are now co-creating solutions with other vendors. With Xvantage, we can deliver these integrated bundles through a seamless self-service experience that combines hardware, software, cloud and services.”