Ingram Micro Australia & Oreta on driving MSP value with innovation

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are reshaping their approach to create sustainable value for customers by embracing innovation, forging robust partnerships, and focusing on outcome-based solutions, according to senior leaders at Oreta and Ingram Micro Australia.

Self-disruption mindset

"One of our values is velocity, and we feel self-disruption is probably the best way of creating value. So, one of the ways we have done to ourselves is we keep challenging every year about what's our key focus, how do we deliver value, not just as a service, but as a solution. So, the outcome-based modelling is probably where the customers are looking forward to us. I mean, looking ahead 12, 24 months is our customers pay us for our expertise and for us to look at a 24-month horizon of what's coming out and mostly in the space of as a solution," said Sachinn Verma, Managing Director, Oreta.

"And partnerships, absolutely the core. The core of this is partnerships with Ingram and AWS and Microsoft. I can go on and on but the key is to partner well and then champion it," said Verma.

Strategic partnerships

"Absolutely, I've been working with Sachinn and the team and my guys have been spending a lot of the time with the guys. And even coming from Partnerland myself, customers nowadays are really looking for that type of mindset. They're not just looking for day-to-day support with their managed services, their S.I. Partner. And one of the great things that we've seen with Oreta is that thought leadership, that different mindset to be able to go in and really strategise with their customers, look for that transformation opportunity and really be different in the market and really find that gap," said Phil Duke, Senior General Manager, Ingram Micro Australia.

BiModal innovation

"I'm a big fan of BiModal, so we run the organisation in mode one and mode two, so there are always these mode two projects running within our company, which is basically our pet projects of innovation. So, for us to give value to our customers, we keep coming up with these solutions or offerings. Right now, we are in the process of coming up with 16 different AI bots for our managed services business. Now that level of work is more to work. You know, it's exciting for our employees. It's super value addition for our customers. And we present them every quarterly to our customers in every QBR," said Verma.

"We're not just talking about boring SLAs or this is what our managed services team did. This is the exact innovative solutions that Oreta is working on. To what Phil Duke, Senior General Manager at Ingram Micro Australia said before, it's about thought leadership. It's about giving our customers that value. They've entrusted Oreta with their operational keys. And when somebody gives the keys to the house to you, you have to be having the responsibility to perform and give them value for that. And for us, that truly starts from the bimodal thinking. And that mode two thinking of is where the IP lies and this is where we make a difference," said Verma.

Project delivery

"Recently we've worked on a number of migration opportunities, and just the level of planning, looking at the opportunities for the customer and how they're actually transformating the customer, the steps, the project management that's behind it. We've seen opportunities. We've seen challenges that for the team have not really been challenged for them, where other organisations have really sort of struggled to do. These guys have come in and they've really stood apart tight from the rest of the market and really sort of transformed a lot of the customer's environments," said Duke.

"And just the other great thing is as well, is just the skill sets across the team when it comes to AWS, really understanding AWS as a whole. And I think that's really been powerful for the customer as well," said Duke.

360-degree expertise

"As an MSP, especially as an in AWS, we come in from different angles from a customer journey. Like, you know, there's obviously cloud in terms of transformation but then network and security are the other elements that we combine our expertise in three different verticals. So the 360-degree of coming and adding value to a customer, especially in a platform like AWS, keeping it secure, keeping it connected, cloud networking is a great asset of our vertical. So, I think that collective value is what creates the momentum," said Verma.

Lifetime value

"It's a tough one, especially in this day and age of AI, with everything is moving in weeks, not even in months. But I think, the value that you drive is, as I said before, partnerships, trust, ability to innovate, and also to create long-lasting value from a customer outcome perspective. So, when you deliver business outcomes, like in one of the migrations we did in AWS, we were able to save the customer USD $200,000 on their licencing, eventually from VMware, for example, that's one of the key topics going on in the industry quite a bit. But it's delivering value, not from commercial sense, but also keeping our customers ahead of the technology curve," said Verma.

"So, the disruption they see day-in, day-out, we see ahead of them. We get, we get to have to learn the disruption, then basically curate the noise out of it, and present the true value of technology in a more curated form. So, I almost feel like we are the first line of defence in the confusion that IT is throwing at our customers. The amount of solutions that people are being bombarded with, they look up to us. They say, what do you think, Oreta? So, this is where we come in and we help them curate an outcome," said Verma.

Outcomes focus

"A lot of the customers are looking for outcome-based solutions. They're not looking for, you know, a product as such and that sort of basic offering and just working with the team at Oreta is just those outcome- based solutions and discussions, you know, transforming organisations, especially when you're talking around things like AI and migrations. Sometimes it's quite complicated subjects, but when you're actually talking about the outcome, the challenges that you've been addressing for customers, have been absolutely amazing and I think, going back to a point I was saying earlier around that the team's knowledge and awareness around AWS and how you can build outcome-based solutions, products from those Lego bricks that AWS provide, I think is just a massive game changer," said Duke.

"AWS Transform is such a great product that we're working on, is using agentic AI. It's actually helping us do migrations quickly. It's giving us that true value, what AI should be doing, when it comes to those complex migrations to back to Phil's point there. So, for me, it's working with partners like AWS that really creates that differentiation point for us. And then you can truly bring that that value to our customers' doorstep," said Verma.

Fail-fast culture

"I think in this day and age, if you don't fail fast, then you don't succeed as much. So, if you have proper governance in place in terms of setting expectations about failing fast, especially when it comes to AI, you know, we're doing a lot of proof of concepts in AWS right now with their bedrock platform. And we set an expectation with our customers that we will pick up, we will ideate some use cases. We'll come up with problem statements. We'll help to solve it and some of them would take a different journey. And that's a journey that we have to come with AI. So, I think, setting an expectation, having a strong governance, creating an eye on the budget and using a lot of proof of concepts, I think that creates a well-regulated system of not being afraid and failing fast. So, I think that's one of the key success criteria that we look at," said Verma.

Core partnership

"I'll answer that question in two parts. One, why AWS for Oreta? So for us, choosing AWS as a partner, it's not only the technical capability of AWS, but it's the cultural compatibility that we see. They're a brand, who embodies innovation and the customer obsession. Even to the degree they run their meetings and they basically curate their presentations. Everything I'm fascinated about. So, for me, it's an ability to disrupt. See, they're a disruptor. So for that, to me, is a big sort of pull. And the other way around, why Oreta for AWS? It's basically our deep expertise, especially in our mid-market segment, where we bring years and years of cloud and multi-cloud understanding of our customers' environment, and understanding of their data centres, understanding of the networks, or the cybersecurity posture, to bring the knowledge of operations and skill sets. When you layer that along with AWS, and then we complement each other pretty well. So, the customer sees a platform that they can go experiment, innovate, migrate, optimise, and this Oreta has that player that can take them safely there, which understands their side of the business. So, I think that really creates the long-standing value between the partnership. Hopefully that answers your question," said Verma.

Market opportunities

"The biggest opportunity, so I would say the VMware takeout that is a massive opportunity for partners. I know that we've been talking about this. There's some strategies that Ingram and Oreta have been working together, but we've seen a lot of customers look at alternative options, and AWS has some amazing programmes, funding programmes to be able to support partners, customers, and that transformation journey to get from that sort of legacy on-prem cloud view perspective to a public cloud, who's someone who can really drive and grow your business," said Duke.

"I totally agree, I think, AI is another pillar that I see, a lot of proof of concepts, which we are seeing going ahead in production, and then bundled with the VMware aspect of it, I think, between the two, those are the two big spinners in the market right now," said Verma.