Ingram Micro Adds Force.com And Amazon To Cloud Marketplace

Ingram Micro announced the release of 56 new products and services as part of its portfolio of cloud and cloud-enabling offerings, during the company’s third annual Cloud Summit for its North America Services Division, which took place June 4-6 in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Among the new releases are Force.com — salesforce.com’s enterprise cloud platform for mobile and social business applications — and Amazon Web Services (AWS), which features data storage and aggregation offerings.

All new additions to the cloud marketplace will be made available to U.S. channel partners within the next 30 days, according to a company announcement.

“Empowering our channel partners with the services, solutions and platforms needed to gain a competitive edge in the market and become a trusted advisor to both small and mid-size businesses is a high priority for Ingram Micro’s Services Division and our cloud sales team,” said Renee Bergeron, VP of Managed Services and Cloud Computing for Ingram Micro North America, in a press statement.

Under a new distribution agreement with salesforce.com, Ingram Micro channel partners in the U.S. can purchase Force.com directly through the Ingram Micro marketplace. This will allow organizations to create and deploy applications for the social enterprise in an efficient and timely manner.

“Force.com is a social enterprise platform that [was designed to] empower companies of all sizes to create social and mobile apps to manage any business process,” said Ron Huddleston, SVP of Global ISV & Channel Partners for salesforce.com. “Together with Ingram Micro, we are extending the reach of Force.com within the channel to provide the flexibility and scale needed to build social enterprise applications.”

Additionally, the inclusion of Amazon Web Services is designed to allow channel partners to build and deliver solutions in a more seamless and robust way. The Amazon Web Services platform includes Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), an offering developed for businesses interested in storing and retrieving data from anywhere on the web. Also included is AWS Storage Gateway, a service designed to provide seamless and secure integration between an organization’s on-premises IT environment and Amazon Web Services storage infrastructure.

“Amazon S3 and AWS Storage Gateway mark some of the first on-demand storage offerings available on the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace,” Bergeron said. “For Ingram Micro channel partners, these two services form linchpins in creating robust cloud service solutions.”

Launched in November 2010, the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace was developed to offer channel partners an array of on-demand business, strategy, marketing, technical and sales solutions and services.

To date, more than 3,000 solution providers and MSPs are accessing the marketplace and utilizing 750-plus free reference documents, sales resources and marketing tools available online focused on the emergence of the cloud.