Credit: Ingram Micro
Ingram Micro has promoted Barbara Kidd to the new position of general manager of cloud in New Zealand, as the distributor expands capabilities through the channel.
Sitting on the executive leadership team, Kidd is now tasked with further driving growth across the expanding Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace in New Zealand.
“Barbara is an inspiring leader in our business who, together with the 15-strong cloud team, has made the division the fastest growing part of the business,” said Gary Bigwood, executive managing director of Ingram Micro New Zealand.
“Her new responsibilities will ensure that this division has an even stronger voice and continues to add value to members of our New Zealand reseller community who are wanting to grow their cloud business.”
With more than 25 years of experience in the wider channel, Kidd has worked in a number of roles at Ingram Micro, including product manager at Microsoft, working with both the tech giant and partners to capitalise on the potential of cloud locally.
Kidd has also held positions at Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, Gen-i - now Spark - and Tech Pacific in 2003, which was later purchased by Ingram Micro.
“In the past 12-18 months we’ve noticed a huge increase in interest from our channel partners in our cloud offering,” Kidd added. “While many are enjoying great returns with more traditional hardware businesses, they recognise that it is necessary to stay ahead of their clients.
"Globally Ingram Micro’s 45,000 cloud resellers are being categorised as 60/30/9/1.
“That is, 60 per cent are providing a few cloud products as their customers request them, 30 per cent are really starting to understand the cloud environment, nine per cent are also providing infrastructure-as-a-service, and one per cent are a full scale cloud partner.”
In November, Ingram Micro launched new vendors on its Cloud Marketplace, including AvePoint Unlimited Cloud Backup, AvePoint Cloud Management, AvePoint Migration to Office 365, Evernote Business, NetConnect, and Geo.
“Ingram Micro has been an early adopter of cloud services, investing in 2015 in the cloud platform Odin, which has recently been rebranded by Ingram Micro to CloudBlue,” Kidd explained.
“We have over 700 developers globally working on CloudBlue, and as such are able to offer New Zealand resellers cloud products that are the best in the world.
“It’s an exciting time to be leading the cloud division for Ingram Micro, and my team is absolutely up for the challenge of helping our channel partners benefit from the opportunities presented by the cloud.”
As part of the change, Kidd will now report directly to director of cloud for Australia and New Zealand, Lee Welch.
