Headquarters:

Kittery, ME

Partner Since:

December 2015

Greenpages Accelerates Growth with Ingram Micro Cloud Partnership

When GreenPages first partnered with Ingram Micro Cloud in 2015, the primary intent was to provide their customers with self-provisioning capability, or a self-procurement tool. They also discovered the ability to enhance their cloud services portfolio and deliver powerful solutions to their customers through Ingram Micro Cloud’s IaaS Lifescycle Services.

“We started with the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace site to allow customers to self-procure licenses,” said Tony Perfilio, Director of CSP Operations and Consumption Advisory Services at GreenPages. “The original process for customers to order CSP licenses was to email their sales representative, so self-service through the Cloud Marketplace platform reduced ordering costs for us.”

Growing With Ingram Micro Cloud

Although the Cloud Marketplace platform continued to evolve and more vendors and products were added, when Ingram Micro Cloud launched the White-Label Marketplace option, GreenPages saw the benefit of customizing the Cloud Marketplace with their own brand in Spring 2020.

“Phase two was to customize the marketplace with a GreenPages-style template, which made it more professional and attractive to our customers,” said Tony. “In other words, we were able to reduce confusion on the customers’ part. Initially with the Ingram Micro-branded site, they wondered why they were being redirected. Once we had our own marketplace branding, a lot of those questions went away.”

While the white-label marketplace option also helped increase adoption of the GreenPages Cloud Marketplace, the biggest impact for the GreenPages CSP operations team in partnering with Ingram Micro Cloud was the premier support.

“The support—it’s been instrumental,” Tony continued. “We were an early adopter of the marketplace platform, and through multiple interactions with the support team and multiple iterations, the platform has become better and better over time.”

“In most scenarios, our customers have to decide ‘What will my experience be like going direct to a cloud provider versus working with GreenPages and Ingram Micro?’” said Erin Marandola, Cloud Systems Administrator at GreenPages. “Through our partnership with Ingram Micro we have a team dedicated to GreenPages where we can open support cases or escalate seamlessly as needed. And if an issue needs to be escalated directly with the cloud provider itself, we also have proven paths to do that. This support experience is invaluable to our ability to provide customers with outstanding service.”

Partnering For Growth

“The partnership with Ingram Micro has allowed us to grow faster. By having an extended team, a collaborative ‘Green Pages and Ingram Micro team, we can more effectively help customers migrate to the cloud or build upon the cloud,” said Tony. “I would promote Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace and Support to organizations or resellers that are starting out selling cloud services. Having a support team (like the one Jonathan Flowers represents) to turn to with questions definitely helps. I'd also recommend Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace and support for organizations—like GreenPages—that are already in the cloud but are looking to scale and grow much faster.”

“I mentioned earlier there's a decision a customer has to make when they're deciding to go direct or to a company like GreenPages,” said Erin. “The same thing applies to resellers. ‘Do I become a direct reseller or do I become a Tier 2?’ And I think there's a lot to be said for being a Tier 2. The amount of resources you need to have to support even a smaller business can be daunting, so from that perspective, partnering with a Tier 1 reseller is a huge advantage.”

Achieving Success

GreenPages went from an “out-of-the-box” Ingram Micro-branded Cloud Marketplace to allow customers to self-procure licenses to branding the site to reduce confusion and increase adoption of their company-branded marketplace. They multiplied the number of customers they support — as well as the number of products and services in their portfolio today. GreenPages’ CSP business has achieved 501% growth over the past four years, with 48% growth over just the past year. They earned the Marketplace Growth Partner of the Year Award in 2021 for their hard work and success.