We caught up with Chris Bradley, CIO of ProTech Services Group, at last year’s Cloud Summit in Miami, Florida. As this was the first return to in-person events after a couple of years, it was amazing to see everyone in person again.

“I don't know how many Cloud Summits I've been to, but it's been a lot, and I’ve made a lot of great friends and great contacts,” said Mr. Bradley. “Especially out here on the event floor, you get a chance to go in and just stop to talk to somebody, regardless of whether it's another partner or one of the vendors or my folks from Ingram Micro. I really miss that.”

Growing With Ingram Micro

The partnership between ProTech Services Group (ProTech) and Ingram Micro started nearly 19 years ago. Mr. Bradley arrived at Protech Services Group about 12 years ago when Ingram Micro had just started offering their seismic services, which consisted of the very basics of “the cloud.” What began as simple monitoring and basic tools evolved into Ingram Micro Cloud.

“From 2012 to 2018, I was on the Cloud Advisory Council, and we advised on a lot of changes to Ingram Micro Cloud and the Cloud Marketplace,” said Mr. Bradley. “It’s grown quite a bit and become quite amazing!”

Benefits of Cloud Marketplace

The team at ProTech uses the Cloud Marketplace every day; they transact on it daily. Almost everything they buy and sell through Ingram Micro, goes through the Cloud Marketplace. Mr. Bradley says the platform is easy to use and he likes the wide range of capabilities, but one of the biggest things he originally wanted was electronic billing.

“The ability to go in there and now to schedule reporting, get billing reporting and ingest that into our various systems—that's made a huge difference, especially with billing reconciliation for us,” he said. “So that is probably one of my favorite features; it sounds so boring, but it makes my life easier.”

New Opportunities in Security and Cloud

As the technology industry evolved over time, new opportunities have become available for Ingram Micro and our partners. 

“It sounds cliché, but security obviously had been bubbling up,” according to Mr. Bradley. “We're seeing a lot more customers coming to us asking about understanding their own cyber insurance policies and ensuring they are able to fulfill said policies (such as, ‘Do we have multi-factor authentication for remote access?’).”

What might have been a simple firewall or antivirus question in the past has grown more complex due to security awareness. IT and technology resellers now have the opportunity to provide additional services, as well as security awareness training both live in person and through various software means. Remote access means digging deeper into the Microsoft 365 suite and being able to enable different security features to meet some of these new requirements from cyber insurance companies.

Many of ProTech’s small business customers are also saying they don’t want to be in the hardware business anymore.

“They're completely moving,” said Mr. Bradley. “They're just bypassing the whole infrastructure-as-a-service and going from on-prem straight into SaaS.” 

“And then from there, customers are looking to move their domain to Azure Active Directory Premium and Intune for access management and to enforce policy,” Mr. Bradley adds. “So it's really worked out well to give them a completely serverless environment. It's all software and networking.”

Global Partner Ecosystem

Ingram Micro works hard to curate and bring in new vendors to the global ecosystem. Whether you’re relatively new to Ingram Micro and don't know much about it or you've been with Ingram Micro for a long time like Protech Services Group, you will always get to meet and work with new vendors. 

“This is just one of many things I think Ingram Micro does for their partners that you certainly don’t get by going direct,” said Mr. Bradley.

Tremendous Support

No matter how big or small your business, Ingram Micro is here to help. A small business may not be able to convince a vendor to make adjustments to a contract, but Ingram Micro will sit at the table and work through it with you.

As Mr. Bradley states with enthusiasm, “Ingram Micro doesn't mind going to bat for you, and I like that a lot!”

One-of-a-Kind Relationships

According to Mr. Bradley, “It's been a long, long partnership and we've worked with a lot of great folks—people who are still here and have been here for probably as long as I remember, which to me says a lot about Ingram Micro to keep people that long. That's what this is really all about: relationships.”

ProTech Services Group is very grateful for all that Ingram Micro has done for them, but likewise, Ingram Micro greatly appreciates the partnership with Chris Bradley and his teams at ProTech.

This year’s Cloud Summit has merged with Ingram Micro ONE and is now the Global Cloud and Innovation Summit. This powerful channel event will be held May 15 – 17, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Register or learn more here.