Ingram Micro has released CloudBlue Rev, its revenue management tool for cloud computing partners, in North America.
First shipped in May, and available since then in the U.K., Germany, and the Benelux region, CloudBlue Rev is a stripped-down version of CloudBlue PSA, the full-scale PSA solution for cloud service providers that Ingram rolled out in March. Both systems are based on software Ingram acquired along with PSA vendor Harmony Business Systems late last year.
Unlike CloudBlue PSA, CloudBlue Rev focuses directly on a cloud partner’s most important and time-consuming tasks: quoting, provisioning, billing, and reconciling as-a-service income against expenses. The system integrates closely with the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace and the Ingram Micro Online platform.
“This is what our partners have been waiting for. CloudBlue Rev not only cuts down on the time and money they spend on tedious channel revenue management processes, but it also allows our partners to deliver a better customer experience,” said John Dusett, executive director of U.S. Cloud at Ingram Micro, in a press statement. “Ultimately, these features—including billing automation and reconciliation within a single interface—help fulfill Ingram Micro Cloud’s ambitious vision of delivering the best solutions in the cloud space.”
Monthly fees for CloudBlue Rev support up to five users and, according to Ingram, compare favorably with competing products offering similar functionality. The system integrates with more than 20 accounting systems and other solutions, as well as Zapier, a popular third-party integration engine with connectors to over 3,000 applications.
“Our team is extremely proud to push forward our mission of giving technology resellers the tools they need to modernize and provide more solutions to their end-customers,” said Scott Murphy, director of global sales for CloudBlue PSA, in prepared remarks. “The release of CloudBlue Rev in North America expands opportunities for partners in the U.S. and Canada to streamline their revenue management and provide a uniform billing experience to their customers.”
Partners with needs CloudBlue Rev can’t accommodate can instead use CloudBlue PSA, which includes modules for ticketing, lead generation, and a wide range of other tasks.
Both CloudBlue Rev and CloudBlue PSA are part of a broader initiative by Ingram Micro’s cloud computing unit to help traditional resellers cash in on exploding demand for “everything-as-a-service” (XaaS) solutions.
Fully 82% of businesses surveyed by Deloitte earlier this year, in fact, currently call XaaS very or critically important for their business success, up from 70% in a 2018 study. Eighty-one percent of XaaS adopters say the pandemic has accelerated their shift to XaaS from traditional IT, 86% call XaaS critical to strengthening their response to business and workforce challenges caused by the pandemic, and 88% believe XaaS will be crucial as their organization recovers from the pandemic.
Ingram also sees the automation functionality in CloudBlue Rev and PSA as a way for partners to free up time they can use to develop and deliver the comprehensive, strategic solutions organizations increasingly want from IT providers. Indeed, 82% of the XaaS adopters surveyed by Deloitte said they could achieve better outcomes if their XaaS providers served as consultative partners rather than product resellers.
“The paradigm is moving from being a reseller to more of a value-added provider, a true cloud service provider, and we are trying to help our ecosystem get there,” said Rajesh Marar, vice president of cloud channel platform in Ingram Micro’s cloud computing group, during a June conversation with ChannelPro. “Over time, we want to help our partners scale up and be able to offer more complex and more expensive services.”
With a similar eye on current market dynamics, distributor D&H rolled out an XaaS configuration tool that lets partners design and deliver as-a-service bundles on a self-serve basis earlier this year.
