Ingram Micro Acquires Cloud Hosting Firm SoftCom

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Toronto-based SoftCom will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Ingram Micro. SoftCom's cloud marketplace will be available as a single portal for resellers to procure cloud solutions and services, said Renee Bergeron, vice president of managed services and cloud computing at Ingram Micro.

"With the addition of SoftCom, we recognized the market-leading skill set and expertise when it came to cloud marketplaces, e-commerce and aggregation to really accelerate our global cloud computing," said Bergeron. "We focused on the portal, which is a great enabler for our reseller partners, allowing them in a single portal to manage their solutions for their end customers."

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The acquisition will also bring others SoftCom solutions to market -- including domain name management, search optimization, Web design and hosting -- to benefit resellers and their customers, said Bergeron.

"Our resellers have a lot of demand for these types of services from their end customers, and now through the SoftCom acquisition, we can bring them these solutions through the Ingram Micro cloud portfolio," said Bergeron. "We are very focused on making sure our reseller partners are equipped with all the tools and solutions they need in order to solve business problems for their end customers."

Ingram Micro has made a number of moves in recent years to build up its cloud business. In 2011, the company launched the Ingram Micro Cloud Summit, an annual event that brings tools and resources to solution providers looking to break into the cloud services game. In addition, the distributor launched its own cloud aggregation platform called the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace that same year. Currently, Ingram Micro offers 170 solutions through its cloud marketplace.

This past April, Ingram Micro also released a new program, called "Seeding the Cloud," to provide partners marketing assistance in securing marketing dollars through the distributor or participating vendors.

Bergeron said the SoftCom acquisition will enable solution providers to grow their cloud operations faster, which in turn will drive stronger overall cloud growth for the industry.

"The growth is truly going to come from the channel," said Bergeron.

PUBLISHED SEPT. 13, 2013