Ingram Micro boosts local IT growth with new Xvantage platform

The Sydney convention hall was abuzz with the convergence of over a thousand technology leaders, IT partners, and C-suite executives for the Ingram Micro Experience 2025, an event that reflected not just the present but the future direction of Australia's IT and distribution landscape. More than a showcase of cutting-edge solutions-from artificial intelligence and cybersecurity through to cloud and infrastructure-the gathering was an illustration of an industry recalibrating at scale and speed amid persistent market complexity.

"The biggest feeling is just excitement, to see the ecosystem come together, to share knowledge and ideas, and the power of this community is second to none," said Hope McGarry, Executive Managing Director of Ingram Micro Australia, reflecting on the dynamic that underpinned the event. McGarry's remarks underscored an industry both proud of its connections and acutely aware of the opportunities and threats shaping its trajectory.

Market optimism, according to McGarry, is running high across the country's technology ecosystem. "There is a lot of bullishness about the opportunity over the next 12 to 18 months. I think we are really seeing that confidence come back into the market," she noted. Still, the optimism is seasoned by the current realities: "There are still challenges around profitability, skill shortage, and complexity in our ecosystem that just also drives uncertainty for all of us."

These headwinds-labour constraints, margin erosion, and technology fragmentation-mirror the broader macroeconomic environment. McGarry identified volatility from geopolitical tensions, tariffs, and trade wars as key concerns for IT leaders. "There is still a lot cost consciousness. There is still a lot of focus on return on investment with end users. The end user requirement has become more and more complex. They're expecting more for less-ROI scrutiny is more than ever, and the deal velocity is certainly slower than I think we've seen it in many, many years."

Yet, it is precisely within this maze of complexity that Ingram Micro seeks to claim its differentiation, fuelled largely by advances in its Xvantage platform. Deployed locally since April 2024, Xvantage has quickly become a lynchpin for the distributor's partners, offering automation, analytics, and an agile integrations hub designed to address long-standing pain points. McGarry emphasised, "Customers are able to do things now in minutes that took them hours, which frees their teams up to be able to focus on what they do best, which is being out with their own customers and driving growth."

The speed of adoption has been notable: "We have over five and a half thousand customers transacting on the platform today. And we have a number of our vendors also on that platform able to gather insights and intelligence around the business that they do with us and with their partner community." Such platform-based approaches aim to counter the IT industry's historical reliance on manual processes and unlock new efficiencies across the value chain. "We are a very manual industry and we have been a manual industry for 20-plus years so to see the automation and the transformation that we're undergoing with Xvantage and to see how that translates to value for our partners is super exciting," McGarry said.

One of the major advancements discussed at the event was the launch of the Xvantage Integrations Hub in Australia, which enhances interoperability with a wide array of partner applications. "The more integration we can have across the biggest range of applications that each of our partners use… is massively game changing. And again, it's just about ease of doing business, reducing friction, freeing up their teams to focus on higher value tasks and less focus on operational inefficiencies," McGarry added.

This frictionless ethos is underpinned by Ingram Micro's global resources, yet crucially, the company maintains strong local autonomy to tailor investments and expertise to the specific needs of the Australian and New Zealand markets. "We are local. We have local autonomy, local skill set, local investment, local expertise, but we have the backing of a very large global organisation, who can make investments in our platform that many others can't. And so, I think that that differentiates us," McGarry stated.

The theme of alignment-between distributor, vendor, and partner-was prominent during the day's conversations. "Organic growth is hard to come by in a very, very mature market like ours, so anything we can do to better align against where our partners may see some challenge or opportunity and be able to support that is really our focus," McGarry explained. This commitment has driven substantial operational investment, much of it targeted at field-facing roles and technical capability aligned to growth sectors.

McGarry believes these investments position Ingram Micro to capitalise on its uniquely broad view of the partner and vendor ecosystem: "We get a very unique view of where we see scale, transformation and growth within the partner and vendor ecosystem. So, we're able to invest ahead of the curve and make sure that we have the resourcing, the sales expertise, the technical expertise to be able to support our partners in those macro areas of growth."

While agility and scale remain crucial to meeting the ever-shifting demands of the IT channel, McGarry also points to the rising importance of specialisation: "Scale and speed are really really important but specialisation is critically important as well. I think, we've done a really good job in the business locally to make sure that we can scale and we can be very agile and support that speed that we know our partners need but also have the specialised skill set to be able to support the complexity of the market today."

Looking ahead, McGarry's advice for partners is clear: "We have the ability to aggregate solutions across multiple stacks. So really looking at what you've seen on the show floor today and thinking about how you could take that and embed that into your go-to-market going forward… Leverage our resources, leverage our teams. We're here to support you and we're here to support you grow, potentially new areas that you may not want to invest in right now yourselves."