Ingram Floats More Cloud - Analyst Blog
June 08 2012 - 6:45AM
Zacks
Having witnessed the soaring demand
for cloud computing and eagerness to transform into cloud
infrastructure, Ingram Micro Inc. (IM) is
increasing focus on cloud offerings. This week, we noticed some new
developments within Ingram’s portfolio.
In its recently held Cloud Summit,
an annual partner program, Ingram’s North America Services Division
announced a bunch of new cloud-based product and service offerings.
With these new products, Ingram’s Cloud Marketplace (a one-stop
shop for cloud offerings from various vendors) can now offer more
than 100 solutions from 40 various technology vendors across North
America. The new products and services will be made available to
all channel partners within a month. The offerings include those
from tech heavy-weights Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and
Salesforce.com Inc. (CRM).
The addition of Amazon.com’s
Web-services will be beneficial for Ingram, since the online
retailer, with its strong base in North America, provides access to
technology infrastructure that developers can use to enable various
types of virtual businesses.
Amazon will provide Ingram’s
customers with two services, namely Amazon Simple Storage Service
and AWS Storage Gateway. These two services are expected to provide
customers with fast, cheap and secured data storage and
retrieval.
On the other hand, Ingram will
resell Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform. This
platform-as-a-service helps in the development of multi-tenant
applications to be run on servers.
Ingram is one of the biggest
players in the IT distribution business. The company’s geographical
diversity makes it a logical choice for manufacturers seeking to
increase international exposure. The channel partners also get
exposure to various technology providers’ offerings under one roof.
Moreover, Ingram’s continuous product enhancement and partner
addition activities will keep it ahead of peers such as
Avnet Inc. (AVT), Arrow Electronics
Inc. (ARW) and Tech Data Corp.
(TECD).
We find Ingram Micro’s first
quarter results impressive as the bottom line was well ahead of the
Zacks Consensus Estimate. The company has provided a positive but
cautious second quarter guidance. But we believe that support from
its Australian venture and the improving IT spending trend will
help Ingram post better results ahead.
We remain fairly optimistic about
Ingram Micro’s strategic relationship with network giant
Juniper Networks Inc. (JNPR), as well as tech
giants such as Hewlett-Packard Company (HPQ),
IBM Corp. (IBM) and Microsoft
Corp. (MSFT).
The company’s growing SMB exposure
and improving profitability is encouraging, but its significant
European exposure and debt burden are concerns.
Currently, Ingram Micro has a Zacks
#3 Rank, implying a short-term Hold rating.
AMAZON.COM INC (AMZN): Free Stock Analysis Report
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INGRAM MICRO (IM): Free Stock Analysis Report
JUNIPER NETWRKS (JNPR): Free Stock Analysis Report
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