Shown above: Trey Lake and Bryan Green, Ingram Micro
Photography by Alice Schmalzl
BCS Connections, hosted by Ingram Micro in Puerto Rico this week, had a full day of Breakout Sessions yesterday covering everything from better working environments to what’s going on with micro gaming.
Nick Nanez and Tom Jones presented the first session we attended on Ingram Micro Gaming, which was an up-close and personal educational look at the fun and value provided by this section of this company.
“The fastest growing sport in the world today is played on a computer,” said Nanez. “And the education vertical has figured this out and they’re using it as a tool to recruit students.”
According to Nanez, colleges are using esports to recruit students and promote educational tools on their campuses. Esports is now the second most viewed sport in the United States, only behind the NFL. There were 27 million viewers in 2021, and that was up 11 percent from the year before, and it’s only growing at double digits every year. 74 percent of U.S. consumers play some form of video game; that’s 234 million plus people playing a video game either on a phone, a tablet, gaming PC or console.
“Video games have touched almost all of our lives in one way or another,” said Jones. “But what if we told you that the gaming world has generated more than eight billion dollars worldwide over the last couple of years? And that’s just the beginning.”
These experts outlined that this sector of sports needs connected technology. They need a backstage, training areas, cameras, digital signage and more. In an esports lab, there is not only the standard keyboard and mouse, but also video and audio switching, the right network and sometimes even custom PCs.
“We have a super robust line card end to end to help you build out these esports solutions,” said Nanez, explaining that Ingram can link with a network of certified installers, financial solutions, technical support services and more. “When it comes to gaming and esports, we have quarterly webinars and trainings to help you, the reseller community, get educated on what’s happening in gaming and esports.”
Transform Digitally Through XVantage
At this breakout sessions, Todd Corey and Michael Mayle spoke about a new Ingram micro tool experience platform that not only customers are going to be on, but associates and vendors.
“It’s going to be able to make our partnerships better than we’ve ever had before. And it’s going to house all our services, products, software and cloud offerings as well right at your fingertips,” said Corey. “So you’re not going to a bunch of different websites and platforms and things like that.”
This tool is going to be seamlessly integrated as well, so users can collaborate and connect and grow businesses. Currently 22 customers are on it, with 67 unique people on the platform right now.
“And the big thing that they’re talking about is user interface, ease of use, and the customization,” said Mayle. “So when Sam Sanji came out, and he had this vision for this platform, someone asked about training, and he said, If we need to do a training on this platform, we didn’t build it right. It’s so intuitive that you can go in and use it.”
Working from Anywhere, Anytime
Trey Lake and Bryan Green presented a talk on working remotely in today’s post-pandemic world. They emphasized that working from home has the misconception of being easy, when in fact it can be more difficult because of the continuous overlap of work and home life.
“We need to make sure that we have the support and training from our leadership and management to know when to address that and know how to navigate those conversations,” said Lake. “And if you’re not communicating with your peers and your associates, you guys won’t get good business done you won’t get good work done. We want to make sure that when you work with Ingram micro, we can build that full solution, whether it be internally for yourselves or with your own customers. You need that collaboration equipment and the tools and resources to do that.”
According to Green, when they are talking about working from anywhere, it’s really around how you easily do that. People don’t want to go to three different places to piece together a solutions. With Ingram, members can make one phone call to somebody to help with a solution quickly.
“Some trends that I’m seeing on my side is my partners are seeking out reoccurring revenue streams,” said Green. “So we’re constantly looking for more ways to continuously bring in revenue without again to do a lot of extra legwork on your end.”
