‘Our technology investments in 2026 will remain focused on creating and capturing value through our Xvantage platform—making it easier for our team and customers to conduct business in real-time using real insights, and taking the friction out of the way B2Bs do business,’ says Ingram Micro CEO Paul Bay.
Ingram Micro CEO Paul Bay will push partners to drive more services-led sales in 2026 along with big investments to drive the company’s AI-powered Xvantage platform.
“Our technology investments in 2026 will remain focused on creating and capturing value through our Xvantage platform,” said Bay in written responses as part of CRN’s 2026 CEO Outlook project. “Making it easier for our team and customers to conduct business in real-time using real insights, and taking the friction out of the way B2Bs do business.”
Ingram Micro’s Xvantage is a digital platform that unifies hardware, software and cloud solutions to streamline operations. It can integrate cloud subscriptions, personalized recommendations, instant pricing, hardware, order tracking, and billing automation in a single platform.
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Irvine, Calif.-based distribution giant, which touts a more than $50 billion annual revenue run rate, is using Xvantage to help partners and customers get faster speed at a lower cost, improve margins and improve scale to generate demand and more services-led revenues, Bay said.
“One of the larger and growing opportunities we see for the channel is turning the market’s demand for speed, simplicity, and real business results—along with ongoing cloud, hybrid, and product refresh needs—into recurring, services-led revenues,” Ingram Micro CEO said.
Ingram Micro’s $50 Billion ARR
Ingram Micro reported total net sales of $12.6 billion for its third quarter 2025, up 7 percent year over year, making the company’s annual run rate exceed $50 billion.
The global distribution company generated $870 million in gross profit in Q3 2025 along with a net income of roughly $100 million.
As part of CRN’s 2026 CEO Outlook project, Bay explains the biggest market opportunities this year, Ingram partners key to success, and Ingram Micro’s most important IT investments in 2026 including Xvantage.
What is the biggest market opportunity you and your channel partners will tackle together in 2026?
One of the larger and growing opportunities we see for the channel is turning the market’s demand for speed, simplicity, and real business results—along with ongoing cloud, hybrid, and product refresh needs—into recurring, services-led revenues.
Services-led revenue is one of four areas where we see strong growth potential for channel partners to scale their talent and technology.
The other three areas include: Maximizing operational efficiencies such as reducing cost to serve and focusing in on how to enhance the customer experience through data and insights.
Mapping out use cases for AI so that customers can see AI in action in and around their business, not just in the headlines. AI enablement needs to give partners insight on where they are in their own AI process and the resources available to them.
And of course, cybersecurity. Whether a business is big or small, a strong security posture is a must.
Opportunities will continue to emerge for channel partners who stay close to their customers and listen to, anticipate, and meet their needs.
To win big and expand their recurring revenues, channel partners must keep the customer at the center of everything they do.
What is the key to success for your channel partners in 2026?
Success in 2026 will come down to staying close to the customer, which means understanding them and anticipating needs.
The most successful will protect and grow the human relationship, not just manage the contract, service or platform.
What are the key technology investments you plan to make in 2026?
Our technology investments in 2026 will remain focused on creating and capturing value through our Xvantage platform—making it easier for our team and customers to conduct business in real-time using real insights, and taking the friction out of the way B2Bs do business.
We will use Xvantage intentionally as a way for our customers to get three things: 1) speed at a lower cost 2) scale to generate more demand and more services-led revenues and 3) service to improve margins and the ultimate experience provided to the end customers.
And we will lean into our AI Factory for continued innovations including what you’ve seen to date with IDA (Intelligent Digital Assistant), our integrations hub, and our Sales Briefing Agent.
In 2025, we used our proprietary AI to significantly reduce friction in reporting, quoting, and other sales workflows for our team, customers, and vendors, as well as accelerate decision-making speed with more relevant data, insights, and targeted recommendations.
We will also expand vendor and ecosystem integrations to simplify how partners engage, sell, and grow. More generally, we will continue to invest in, further educate, and modernize around cybersecurity and resilience across the business.
Fill in the blank: My top priority for 2026 is:
Keeping customers at the center of every decision we make and providing the best data and insights to give them a greater business advantage now and in the future.
What impact do you expect AI to have on the business you and your partners do together in 2026?
AI will continue to have a growing and positive impact on how we engage in 2026. As an industry, we must continue to move beyond conversations and pilots into real operational execution at scale.
We’ve done this with Xvantage and, as such, are able to enable faster decisions, smarter actions, and greater efficiency on and inside the business, as well as across the ecosystem.
Intelligent automation and insights—including those found in Xvantage and within IDA and our new Sales Briefing Agent—will help our team and our customers work more effectively and expand on current opportunities and uncover new ones.
At the same time, human expertise—real people adding real business value and tribal knowledge—will remain essential, guiding how AI is applied and enabling our customers to deliver differentiated, AI-enabled managed and industry solutions to their customers.
What do you see as the toughest challenges facing customers in 2026?
Customers will continue to face a challenging combination of cybersecurity risk, talent shortages, and growing complexity in 2026.
Threats will continue to increase as more business activity moves into digital and hybrid environments, raising expectations around resilience and protection.
At the same time, gaps in cloud, AI, and emerging technology skills will slow progress for many organizations. These pressures are compounded by complex IT environments, where integrating and managing multiple platforms can hinder both innovation and daily operations.
For our part, we are supporting our customers with the right mix of solutions, resources, services, financing, and technology to minimize risks and maximize how they can invest in their own success, differentiate their business and build more services-led revenues.
