 From Miami Beach, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019. Brought to you by Acronis. Hey, welcome back, everyone, it's theCUBE's coverage of Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019. And here at Miami Beach, Florida, at the Fontainebleau Hotel, I'm John Ford, host of theCUBE. We're here with Craig Weir, director of Cloud Portfolio at Ingram Micro. Welcome back to theCUBE. Welcome to theCUBE. Director of Cloud Portfolio at Ingram Micro Cloud. So you guys have a cloud, and you guys have sales, technicals out there. We got everything. So we have the platform itself. So we have our own platform that's used by one third of the world telcos. We have large bars, D bars, SPs using our platform. We're also a cloud aggregator. So we offer pretty much any vendor solution on there. So today we have over 200 solutions on our platform. We offer services to help partners grow and expand because jumping from where they are today, where they want to go tomorrow is very difficult. So we offer those services. So it's a full package. You know what I'm really impressed with Ingram? I got to tell you, Ingram Micro, you guys have essentially reinvented you guys' self in plain sight. So it's like changing the airplane out of 35,000 feet. It's really hard to do. You guys have done it. You've essentially taken a distribution model to the cloud, can maintain that stickiness with your clients and partners, and now have automation built in. We always talk about, we're building the plane while we fly it. And we've been doing that for 10 years. We were the first to get in the cloud, where the world's largest distributor. We know that, but times are changing and you need to adapt with it. So we want to get ahead of the curve being that we want to own the platform. So we made large acquisitions to be the number one platform provider. We also want to do the value-add service because partners today want to make that change. They're starting to make that change, but they're not sure exactly how to do it or how to monetize it correctly. So we realized early on, we need to make a massive investment and DNA change in what we do. The old word of pickpocket ship is gone, right? Distributor now means a million things that we do. We're more of a service provider than we are anything else. Yeah, it's so funny, you know, and also gross margin used to be higher in the old days. When they started to get hit and started getting out of that direct distribution, there was margin pressure. And again, channeled business are very efficient. The week don't survive very long and the ones that are smart actually evolve. It's a great case where you can wrap services around it and with the cloud you get operating leverage. So you have an investment, now you have a business model for the next 10, 20 years. Yeah, you think about distribution's basis points. It's a term that doesn't really exist outside distribution where it's razor thin on those margins. But to your point on cloud, there's a much heavier lift and it's much more proactive selling. So obviously we want to focus that area where we can have growth at a higher profitable rate. And if we can wrap it on platform services around that and make even more money and get more value to the channel, why not? Well, that's what the channel wants. They want profitability, they want to keep their customers and increase their gross profit. And that's from services. And now with software economic margins coming in, the marginal revenue is higher. Software economics are great. Yeah, and I think a lot of partners today, MSPs, LARS, VARs, DVARs, they don't really know what does their company actually worth. What's the multiple, right? And they're trying to do that assessment of how much your business actually services and how much is that just reoccurring on a new basis, not managed services in some respect. So for us, we look at that and say, how do we actually help you migrate to that business? We want to get you to 60, 50, 70% services led where you're making an average of 10, 20, 30 points. And a lot of your partners, too, have longstanding relationships with customers. And so by you innovating, that just trickles down to them. That makes it sticky for you guys. Great business model. Craig, talk about your relationship with Cronus. We're here at their Global Cyber Summit 2019. Talk about what you guys are doing with them. So we've been at Cronus for six years now. We are their largest distributor worldwide. We offer them from which every country we operate. They're one of our leading, if not sure they are leading, back-obsessed recover and cybersecurity solution. We have an amazing partnership at every single level. When it comes to how we go to market, how we back into position, how we recruit and enable partners, it's really next to none. We have very, very aggressive timelines and goals for next year for where we want to go and where that means it's actually growth, expansion, service offering, no matter the headcount we have towards this initiative. Cronus is our number one provider. They have a similar DNA and they're thinking like you guys do with the cloud, they're thinking about how that transformation business model evolved for Ingram Micro. They are seeing it now with their unique integrated, well it won't be unique for long because I think everyone's going to copy it, this integrated holistic view having a platform that's in enable, and that's just hardware. They have infrastructure, but they got a platform layer which is an enabling capabilities for sets of services on top. There's and their ISVs and developers. I mean that's just a proven platform formula. What's your feedback on that? Do you see that translating well in the field and the partner networks? Yeah, very well. I think today you think of Backup Disaster Recovery as legacy Backup Disaster Recovery. Where am I backing up to? Why am I backing? It's for that disaster, not remediation of issues, security risks. You're seeing them go into a completely security play which somewhat argues that it makes no sense. You're Backup Disaster Recovery or BDR, but if you think of the ransomware attacks today, the fact that I can have a safe copy I can dial up in minutes where ransomware's no longer an issue. How they position that is really a security end-to-end solution. It doesn't mean that you don't need any other security. Obviously you still do, but it comes at a very different angle. And I think it provides a bit of clarity to customers who are confused. They said that earlier today they mentioned how many different security providers are coming open every single day. No one wants to buy another tool. No, and there's no more large mega offer. There's no one solution. You know, solving the ransomware problem certainly is a great way to get a beachhead at any account. Hey, I got the best mouse trap for solving ransomware. In that case, that's when a better mouse trap works. You're right to the front of the line. And once you're in there, then you've got to figure it out. This is what's interesting to me is that it's a data solution. If they can crack that nut, it's a winning formula. You know, you think of it really basic. What are we trying to do? Who are we trying to protect? Either people or information, right? We're not worried about protecting people today. We're talking about information. So at the end of the day, what's most vital to a company's organization? You're looking at their customer data, their personal data, financial data. If you think about what you want them to have access to, how do you want to remediate that? So the ability to have the end to end and have that story, which is really, really important to the customer to have that clarity on why it's critical. Well, you guys do a great job of security. I read your reports every year that go out at VMworld and reinvent all the different events you guys go to. You guys are a great security group. So that's the props for those guys. I want to get back to this data backup thing that you mentioned earlier, because we had some insight from our conversation I was just on with the Forrester analysts where if you look at back of a recovery, it was basically because there was some operational disruption. That had nothing to do with security. It was like lights go out, hurricane, hurricane, sandy, whatever happened, something's happening. And that was all built around the continuity of, it's down, roll it back. But now the disruption is security. It is. So no one's actually thought about it that way. So I think these guys have a great angle on thinking of it like, well, if the disruption is security, that changes, that eliminates almost all the current solutions, because they're just rolling back bad code. Yeah, I don't think it eliminates all of them, but it's a great point. Well, I'm a majority of them. You sit there and go, well, why is occurrence a security provider? That makes no sense. And you sit back and start thinking about the approach, because again, we're thinking old BDNR. The new world of backup and disaster recovery is not the disaster being a natural occurrence or something that were to happen. It's the every single day cyber attack and ransomware that's happening on a regular basis. That's the new norm. The new norm isn't the hurricane, isn't the cyclone. It's security attacks, everything. And they're happening weekly too. Towns are being taken out. Craig, observations from your standpoint of being an industry participant, got the experience out there in the field, talk to a lot of customers, get to your own cloud. Just in general, the top story in this whole cyber protection, security, data world, what's the top story in your mind? And someone says, hey, what's the most important story that needs to be continually covered and talked about? I think what we're missing today is a lot of partners aren't protecting their own house. At the end of the day, when an MSP is looking after their end user's data, do they really understand what they're responsible for? Do they have the right system in place? It's back to the constant security attacks. We're seeing time and time again, MSPs medium to small are having massive breaches and going into business in their time. We see MSPs who want to go to MSSP, but that requires either managed security service provider. So you're an MSP specializing dedicated on security. You have a SOC, which means basically you have a security operational center, meaning that you have to either buy that or go and invest on it or maybe partner with somebody. It's incredibly expensive. So MSPs today. The compliance and the insurance alone. The compliance, insurance, the expertise, there's a massive shortage of people. So we kind of see the MSPs today, maybe five, maybe 10% could go make that leap to MSP. So everyone else is figuring out, how do I manage the security space? I have all these different offers I have and solutions I have. A lot of them are homegrown. They're not very good. So at the end of the day, when we look at what's missing is, hey, if you're an MSP, use your own house protective. Before you try to protect someone else's, because if you're managing all that data for that partner, you better make sure your house is protected. Protect your own house. And I think that's interesting what's interesting coming out of the Cronus is that, I mean, it's a little bit of a flashy announcement, but the blockchain notary, they're saying, hey, we'll protect the data in all forms. We'll encrypt it on a blockchain. So that speaks to the supply chain problem. Well, data is a supply chain. It is. And you sit there, again, let's talk old backup disaster recovery. You have data somewhere. It's a copy of your file. Do you know it's a clean copy, an authentic file? Do you know that something hasn't happened to it before? We never would have known that. Now we do. Well, I've always said in the cube, Dave Vellante, and I talk about storage, not about the storage CPUs and the hardware, it's about the data that's being stored. Take care of your own house first before you take on the people's data. I love that analogy. Yeah, and you know, customers are getting smart these days. Customers are looking, they're doing reading. Most customers are 80% of the time they're looking at word of mouth, trusted advisor, they're doing research online. So they're demanding this. Craig, I really appreciate your insights. Thanks for taking the time to share. Take a minute to give a plug for what you guys do with the cloud. How do I, how does someone get involved and work with you? What's the customer for you? Take a minute to give a plug up for what you guys do. Yeah, so in your mic, so we're the largest cloud organization in the world. We'll talk to US specifically. So. Cloud. US cloud. Amazon's bigger. As a distributor. Okay, distributor cloud. Yeah, distributor cloud, yeah. Just making sure you're keeping it on the right track. Yeah, no, it's a good point. So we actually are, we do distribute AWS, we do distribute Azure, that are just for both of them in the channel perspective. But partners today, what I would say the opportunity to them is there's those who play very heavily in this space, that those that do not. Everyone is somewhere in the middle. Working with Ingrid Mike, really the ability to really, what we say the cloud awesome is roadmap, which Renee presented earlier. If taking a partner from infancy, maybe they're doing a handful of SaaS offers today, to going 10, 20 offers on a regular basis. We really enable and train them to make that jump. Both financially and from a scale set perspective. Can anyone get involved? Do you guys have a vetting process? They have a cloud SaaS app? Yeah, so we have a cloud marketplace. If you're an Ingrid micro account today, you have a free account into our cloud marketplace, which is our e-commerce buying engine, which is built on cloud blue, which is our platform. Free access to it, online purchasing of any SaaS offer you want, depending on what the authorizations are by the SaaS offer. Free access to our team when it comes to how to enable, support them, whether it's security, UCAS, backup SaaS recovery, public cloud, Microsoft, you name it. And it's really a team dedicated to help the problem solvers, which is everyone here today, solve the current problem, how to get more of a new subscription basis. Awesome, well congratulations. Cloud marketplaces are hot. You guys are the number one channel, distributor, cloud, whatever it's called. Is there a category? Like there's a- We're making a new category. Channel cloud. Yeah, you could say. Distributed cloud. Distributed service provider, yeah. Congratulations, you're microtrans, building the plane while they're flying. I love that one too. It's theCUBE. They're flying here in Miami Beach, the Fontainebleau Hotel for Cronus's Global Cyber Summit 2019. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break.