Ingram Micro and Microsoft team up on fresh cloud marketplace integration

Ingram Micro Cloud has completed a successful integration of Microsoft’s updated new commerce experience billing options into its marketplace, an effort expected to extend more offerings and more versatility to partners and end customers.

Microsoft’s new commerce experience (NCE) in the vendor’s cloud solution provider (CSP) program is a multi-stage, multi-year transformational process by the company to deliver a simplified engagement experience designed to benefit both partners and customers.

It is designed to make transacting licences and attaching and managing services easier, ostensibly helping to accelerate partners’ business growth and their customers’ cloud adoption.

The company’s ongoing new commerce experience efforts saw the vendor announce the general availability in early January of new commerce seat-based offers in its CSP program, including for Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform and Windows 365.

“This evolution is part of our continuing journey to drive cloud business growth, reduce licensing complexity and costs, and be responsive to how customers prefer to purchase and partners are enabled to sell,” said Rodney Clark, corporate vice president, global channel sales and channel chief at Microsoft, at the time.

Upon the successful integration of Microsoft’s NCE into the Ingram Micro Cloud platform, Clark said that the vendor was delivering a “consistent, simplified and flexible purchase experience” for customers and partners.

“Our collaboration with Ingram Micro Cloud has helped make this transition seamless and efficient for numerous partners and customers,” he said.

In addition to added flexibility in subscription quantity, it is anticipated that partners stand to benefit sustainably from the new commerce experience’s incremental monthly, annual and multi-year purchasing terms and fixed rates.  

The model is designed to equip customers to more accurately forecast recurring revenue and gives greater access with term customisation.

From Ingram Micro Cloud’s perspective, the new generation of billing models that come with the new ‘experience’ are all about term flexibility, revenue predictability, long-term stability and, largely, a greater variety of options for consumers.

However, Ingram Micro Cloud’s senior vice president, Victor Baez, concedes that the shift to Microsoft’s new model will be harder for some partners than others.  

“We know there may be some challenges that arise from transitioning to the Microsoft new commerce experience structure,” Baez said. “We’ve worked very closely with Microsoft’s engineers and sales teams to streamline the transition for our MSP [managed service provider] and reseller partners.   

“We took the necessary steps to prepare the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace to transact with Microsoft’s new commerce experience and actively supported our channel partners ahead of time to ensure they were on the leading edge of this transition.   

“The great news is this transition should ultimately free up more time for channel partners to grow their cloud businesses,” he added.

In addition to the new commerce experience framework and long-term commitment options, Ingram Micro Cloud is offering financial solutions that are designed to alleviate potential credit risks associated with lengthy subscription terms like those the model’s multi-year fixed rate offers.

Microsoft’s new commerce experience was first announced in 2019, with the vendor launching the model for Azure in its CSP program.

The idea was to bring a simplified Azure journey for both the customer and the partner to transact in a consistent and standardised purchase process.

Now, the company is busy transitioning subscriptions like Office 365, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Windows 365, Power Platform and more to the same framework.

Microsoft’s continued investment in its new commerce experience is aimed at providing a single, connected commerce infrastructure for customers, supported by guidance, capabilities, tools and programs for partners to help customers meet their digital transformation goals.

“Over time the new commerce experience will result in streamlined engagements and create more surface area for partners to engage in the CSP program,” Clark said earlier this year.