Ingram Micro Inc. has introduced a new packaged solution that combines Microsoft Office 365 with associated services from SkyKick Inc. for a single monthly fee.
Listed on Irvine, Calif.-based Ingram’s cloud marketplace, the new offering is the first to include Microsoft’s productivity and collaboration suite plus SkyKick’s data migration and backup products in a single SKU. It’s also the first time the SkyKick Migration Suite has been part of a subscription-priced solution.
Pricing on the bundle, which is sold in one-year terms, is structured such that migration is essentially provided free, according to Peter Labes, vice president of business development at SkyKick, whose headquarters are in Seattle.
“This is our best value that a partner can leverage today, in terms of the economics in year one and beyond, because it’s simple, it’s monthly, it’s tied together with Office 365, and they’re getting their complimentary or free migration,” he says, noting that the migration includes support for shared mailboxes and public folders. Partners must normally pay extra for those services when buying the standard migration suite.
“It’s very, very profitable for them,” Labes says of the new package.
Available for the E1, E3, Business Essentials, and Business Premium versions of Office 365 at present, the new solution is designed to make launching profitable, competitiveness-boosting cloud service practices easier, according to Tim FitzGerald, vice president of cloud channel sales at Ingram Micro.
“The opportunity for partners to take this highly differentiated solution that gets delivered in an automated way because of how it’s been bundled on our marketplace is a tremendous opportunity to expand their portfolio and deliver greater value to those customers and increase the stickiness with that customer,” he says.
It also helps Office 365 resellers add ongoing backup charges to one-time migration fees, Labes notes.
“Once they’ve done the migration and they’ve moved their customers to the cloud, then they’ve got this recurring revenue stream,” he says.
Ingram and SkyKick plan to expand the bundle to encompass additional Office 365 plans in the future.
“We’re going to add even more options and SKUs and license types over time,” says Chike Farrell, SkyKick’s vice president of marketing.
Without providing specifics, Labes suggests that SkyKick could offer similar packaged solutions through companies other than Ingram.
“We’ve got integrations with other distributors and their marketplaces, and I’m optimistic that we’ll see more of this in the industry,” he says.
SkyKick shipped major upgrades of both its Migration Suite and Office 365 administration platform in June. Named Cloud Manager, the management tool is the only one of the company’s three main offerings not included in the bundled Ingram SKUs.
