Over 3000 channel partners across the Indian sub-continent experienced the world’s first truly digital channel conference at the Ingram Micro Digital Transformation Summit 2019. The distribution giant’s flagship conference in India offered delegates a glimpse of the future as they learned about HCI, Security, Cloud, IoT, AI and other emerging technologies in their own cities while the speakers were hundreds of miles away in Mumbai.
Earlier this month Ingram Micro India held its flagship technology event – the Digital Transformation Summit 2019 on the 4th & 5th of September. The main event was held in Mumbai and was live-streamed to 3000+ channel partners and technology leaders from across 33 locations in India, Sri Lanka & Bangladesh. The unique format and insightful content delivered by participating vendors, industry experts and Ingram Micro executives made it a truly inclusive event, something the global channel ecosystem had never experienced before. In addition to the audience gathered at the 33 physical venues, thousands more tuned in to the live stream from their homes and offices in countries like Brazil, UAE, Bangladesh, Nepal and the USA.
Digital Transformation – The channel opportunity
As one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing IT markets, India is digitizing faster than many mature and emerging markets. As digital capabilities and connectivity improve, technology is poised to radically disrupt nearly every sector of India’s economy. The best way to accelerate this is to enable channel partners with the tools and training to provide their customers with the latest and most relevant technologies. While conceptualizing this conference, the team at Ingram Micro were motivated by three key objectives:
- Inclusivity and a desire to create communities without barriers
- Achieving as minimal a carbon footprint as possible
- Embracing digital transformation in every possible aspect
By streaming to venues in locations like Guwahati, Jammu, Dehradun, Madurai etc., delegates were able to attend the conference in their own cities, thereby eliminating the need to travel long distances, simultaneously achieving the first two objectives. This distributed format also allowed the conference to have a far wider reach than conventional single-city conferences. The third objective was met by replacing traditional means of engagement, Q&A and lead-gen with an event app that provided a comprehensive set of features to meet these requirements. The thoughtfully curated topics and set of speakers drawn from the top ICT vendors were the final step in answering the most pertinent question: “How could we take Digital Transformation from being just a buzzword to being a reality that is understood and embraced by every person in the IT ecosystem?”
Highlights of Digital Transformation Summit 2019
The event featured 25+ insightful sessions by industry leaders and senior executives from Cisco, Microsoft, Dell, VMWare, Aruba, Hitachi Vantara, Red Hat, Acronis, APC, Symantec, Deskera, LogMeIn, Adobe, Ingram Micro and several others.
On Day 1, the sessions centered around digital transformation and the proliferation of technologies such as HCI, SD-Wan, Cybersecurity, Networking, DataOps and IoT. Sameer Garde, President, Cisco India & SAARC spoke about the potential for digital growth in India and opportunities for channel partners in the next 5 years. In his keynote, Rajiv Sodhi, Executive Director, Commercial Partnerships, Microsoft India shared his insights on how digital is driving business in India and highlighted that about 60% of GDP components will be impacted by digital technologies in India by 2021. Praveen Joseph, Principal, Cyber Security Services, Ingram Micro focused on why organizations need to adopt a holistic approach to cybersecurity, and how Ingram Micro helps partners fulfill the security needs of their customers. Santanu Ghose, Director, India, Aruba spoke about Network-as-a Service and SD-Branch. The day saw many other interesting sessions by speakers such as Rajesh Ramnani – Enterprise Director at Dell Technologies, Anish Gogate – Lead SD-WAN at VMware, Anupam Nagar – Senior Director Channels & Strategic Alliances at Hitachi Vantara, Jaya Mahadevan – Director Channel Sales at APC by Schneider Electric, Vineet Saxena – CEO at Dalisoft, Manish Pradhan – GM IoT at Ingram Micro, Tapan Chaturvedi – Channel Leader India & South Asia at Adobe & Guru Vaidya – Creative Evangelist at Adobe.
Diego Utge, SVP & Country Chief Executive, Ingram Micro India kicked off Day 2 with an inspiring keynote – ‘Are you future-ready?’ that set the tone for the rest of the day. Day 2 delved into all aspects of selling Cloud technologies through sessions like ‘Microsoft opportunities for the ICT Channel’ delivered by Mandar Kulkarni – Director Partner Technology at Microsoft, ‘Success-as-a-Service’ by Jyotil Mankad, Director, Cloud at Ingram Micro & Sailajanandan Nayak, DGM, Marketing Ingram Micro, ‘Fastrack to ISV success with Ingram Micro GTM’ by Nitin Jain – Chief Business & Product Officer at NowFloats and Digital Disruption 3.0: Create new experiences & business models by Ravinder Pal Singh – CEO at Merkado RHA. Vendors like LogMeIn, Salesforce, Symantec, Acronis & Deskera also showcased their latest technology and solution offerings to the audience. Both days of the event concluded with a series of breakout sessions around Ingram Micro’s services for channel partners around channel financing, consulting, IT Asset Disposition and Infrastructure-as-a-Service. The grand finale and a fitting end to this two day technology extravaganza was the closing ceremony where the sweepstakes saw Royal Enfield bikes being given away to five lucky channel partners from across the country.
Key Takeaways
Digital Transformation Summit 2019 was an unforgettable event for the 3000 odd delegates who assembled all over the sub-continent, giving them a close look at the latest technologies that are disrupting conventional businesses models, as well as a view of Ingram Micro’s initiatives to help channel partners embrace the digital future. This event also commemorates the 40th year of Ingram Micro. Diego Utge, SVP & Chief Executive Ingram Micro India reflected upon the event saying, “Through the Digital Transformation Summit 2019, we’ve created a unique platform that channel partners across the country can leverage to learn about the latest industry trends from the biggest and the best names in technology. We are amazed and overwhelmed with the participation from delegates, speakers and sponsors as well as the feedback that we have received from them. Most importantly, we are glad that everyone who attended the event found the content relevant and this has only inspired us to make the next edition of Digital Transformation Summit even bigger and better.”
