Distie-loving cloud kingpin beds Ingram Micro

Ingram Micro has become the first distributor to join the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF), the not-for-profit organisation trying to promote a Code of Code and open debate among suppliers.

The cloud is set to dramatically alter the IT product supply chain, but CIF chairman Andy Burton said he did not believe the role of distribution will change in the short term.

"Distributors will become cloud brokers, aggregators of services," he told El Reg.

"This is a divergent market so there is a role for a commercial organisation to assess and determine how to adapt certain services-based models to allow VARs to package them," he added.

Resellers are at different stages in moving to cloud computing and transactional product dealers needed distributors to build skills in the channel, Burton added.

Matt Sanderson, UK boss at Ingram Micro, said in a statement that CIF was "leading the charge for better practice and transparency in the cloud".

According to Canalys, 95 per cent of the IT industry is still delivered through the traditional model and although cloud sales are ramping up at 25 per cent a year, they will represent just 8 per cent of all spend by 2015. ®