Ingram Micro VTN: What's 2011 Going To Bring?

By Gennifer Biggs, security, storage, and managed services editor

The theme of this week's Ingram Micro VTN Invitational in Chicago is simple: The Future Is Ours. CEO of Ingram Micro Greg Spierkel expounded on that theme for the nearly 700 VTN attendees on Monday morning, April 11, as part of his welcome speech. Spierkel unveiled Ingram Micro's global plan for addressing several industry drivers, and talk optimistically about this year's IT spend and the impact it will have on the channel.

"We're already starting to see healthy growth, including an expected 11% hardware growth through 2014, software sales up nearly 6% and services growth up nearly 3%," Spierkel told the gathering. The places Ingram Micro expects strong growth over the next few years aren't surprising — cloud will grow 26% into 2013, and mobility will follow closely behind at 11% growth.

In fact, the growth of both is somewhat entangled, with many analysts expecting mobility — use of everything from smart phones to tablets — to respond strongly to the accessibility and agility provided by hosted applications and infrastructure. In fact, Gartner predicts mobility sales will increase 54% this year alone, and all those devices will impact infrastructure heavily, providing solid opportunity for channel businesses that can support, manage, and prioritize mobile access to wireless infrastructure. "Every dollar a customer is spending on mobile hardware — regardless of the form factor — means an equal amount of money spent on software apps and other auxiliary purchases," explains Spierkel.

So how is Ingram Micro preparing for this year and next? Spierkel shared the global strategies as three pillars. One, to excel by increasing market share and streamlining costs while improving global systems, and augmenting its eSolutions. Two, strengthening Ingram Micro by solidifying offerings around data capture and POS and improving its value position in data center. Lastly, developing broader services expertise, building a compelling cloud offering, and focusing on mobility solutions.