Global distribution behemoth Ingram Micro (NYSE: IM) has promoted Kirk Robinson to senior vice president, Commercial Markets and Global Accounts for North America, expanding his prior role to include ownership of the distributor’s global accounts and supervision of additional strategic key business units. He is responsible for managing the business leaders responsible for Ingram’s SMB, public sector and VAR business units along with some top-performing system product categories and vendor relationships.
Robinson, who has been with Ingram for 20 years, is credited with making a significant impact on Ingram’s U.S. sales teams and spearheading the launch of the distributor’s Business Intelligence Center in 2009. Under Robinson, Ingram’s commercial markets division and its SMB business unit have posted record growth rates and brought on hundreds of new channel partners, according to the company.
In 2006, Robinson was named vice president of Ingram North America channel marketing and in 2010 he was appointed vice president of VAR sales, market development and business intelligence followed shortly afterward by his ascension to vice president of Ingram’s U.S. commercial markets business.
“Year-over-year, Ingram Micro earns its title as the IT channel’s most strategic and valuable distributor. I am eager to work side-by-side with my team and our channel partners to break new territory and exceed our shared goals,” Robinson said in a prepared statement.
Part of that new territory Ingram Micro hopes to make its mark in is physical security, which is fast becoming a hot market for channel partners to take advantage of the growing demand for solutions tied to identity protection. To that end, the distributor has added HID Global’s secure identity solutions to its line card, offered through its Physical Security division.
HID Global offers a portfolio that includes physical and logical access control including strong authentication and credential management, card printing and personalization, visitor management systems, highly secure government and citizen identification and identification RFID technologies used in animal ID and industry and logistics applications. Target markets include government, financial services, corporate, education, retail and health care.
The company maintains a channel partner program consisting of 232 OEMs, distributors, resellers and integrators worldwide. Program members receive sales leads and marketing assistance, and, along those lines, Ingram plans to offer both its and HID Global’s partners sales and support services including cross-trained technical support and training programs.
“As security threats become more complex, the business need for more advanced and highly integrated security solutions, such as secure identity, authentication management and access control, becomes increasingly more important and presents a growing business opportunity for channel partners specializing in this space,” said Tom Burns, Ingram Physical Security business unit director.
