Ingram Micro Australia launches The Great Migration: What it means for Aussie partners
At Ingram Micro Experience 2026, the distributor unveiled its new initiative to help partners in their AI journey.
As AI use increases among partners and their customers, Ingram Micro Australia has launched a new initiative to help partners excel and continue on their AI journey.
The initiative, called The Great Migration, connects Microsoft, technology vendors, silicon partners, OEMs and channel partners under a framework focused on helping organisations to transform AI deployment and achieve ROI on their AI investment.
This program was developed in collaboration with Microsoft and supported by Intel, AMD, Qualcomm Snapdragon, Dell Technologies, HP, Lenovo, Asus, MSI and Microsoft Surface.
Caleb Leung, general manager, Ingram Micro Australia told CRN Australia that this is the next step in the Windows 11 refresh, ensuring all partners and their customers can use AI to its fullest potential.
"The modern device story becomes the story of animal migration, ‘If you don't do it, you die’. That's why the there's a need,” he said.
“That's the beginning of why now and why we have the concept.”
Ingram Micro is using phases of migration, land, sea and air, to categorise each upgrade milestone. However, they are still ironing out the specifics on what each milestone represents.
During Covid, partners and customers bought Windows 11 devices, however, they were never built to be AI compatible.
Andy Malakooti, go to market lead, device partner sales, Microsoft Australia & New Zealand explained that those who refreshed their devices were using PCs from 2021, and now they are struggling to use AI.
“They're four plus year old devices, and the experience that they have on those devices is not fit for purpose based on what they want to use devices for today, to the extent of the era of AI coming into reality and customers starting to deploy AI, be it in a cloud or hybrid based environment,” Malakooti explained.
As conversations around AI are now evolving into projects and proof of concepts, Mo Kandeel, director consumer, client and endpoint, Ingram Micro said the conversations between Ingram Micro and its customers have evolved from a priced-based conversation to an outcomes-based conversation.
“What we're trying to achieve with The Great Migration is enabling the channel ecosystem on how to have that conversation and not just by running a training session and saying ‘good luck you're on your own’, but more so ongoing enablement training,” he explained.
“We've got a dedicated team of specialists that are there to work with our partners and enabling their sales force on how to go down that AI journey with their customers.”
Some of The Great Migration offerings include sales and technical enablement, partner incentives, marketing and demand generation programs, and migration acceleration funds to support end user deployments.
Assisting the AI revolution
As more organisations are defining their AI strategies, Kandeel noted that they’re seeing more opportunities come up.
“For example, organisations that are using solely cloud AI, for example, their users are starting to use AI, and then they're consuming tokens, and it's costing them a lot of money,” he said.
“Having an AI-enabled device takes away that cost altogether.”
Kandeel added that as organisations and their users’ needs are evolving this is when they begin to add AI as a part of their overall strategy.
“Instead of treating them as three separate projects or two separate projects, they're looking at their entire AI strategy, including devices, and that's what's driving opportunity,” he said.
Aims for The Great Migration
As partners begin their modernisation journey, the executives explain what they would love to achieve with this program.
For Leung, he would love to see everyone migrate to AI PCs.
“More than ever, if we can have Copilot plus PC as a major share of [devices] that would be great. That's probably how I measure our milestones as well,” he said.
Malakooti noted it's all about continuing to modernise endpoints.
“Giving customers access to the latest technology so they can get the tools they need to run their business effectively and efficiently,” he said.
“If that's older Windows 11 devices, if it's older Mac devices, so be it. It's giving customers access to the technology that enables them to deploy AI throughout their organisations in the right way.”
Kandeel wants to see as many partners grow their AI go-to-market strategy through adopting The Great Migration.
“Successful partnerships and successful adoptions,” he said.
“Having partners that we're able to work with that can go, ‘we didn't have an AI strategy, and now have got X amount of customers who we're working with and deploying their AI strategies’,” he said.
“That’s a big element of success as well, because what we're trying to drive with this is not unit sales or dollars, but it's a behaviour change, it's a sales motion change, it's trying to drive more than just a number.”
CRN Australia is the exclusive media partner of Ingram Micro Experience 2026.