IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As part of its first-ever virtual challenge, Ingram Micro Cloud announced Alsid (Paris, France), apoQlar (Hamburg, Germany) and Balbix (San Jose, California) as the global finalists for the company’s 2020 Comet Competition, a worldwide search for the most innovative business-to-business (B2B) software startup.
This year’s competition saw over 4,000 applicants from over 20 countries, vying for the opportunity to showcase their innovations that can revolutionize the cloud ecosystem. The Comet Competition plays an integral role in Ingram Micro Cloud’s mission to accelerate innovation and empower today’s problem solvers in conquering tomorrow’s biggest business challenges.
The solutions offered by the finalists have been deemed transformational by the Ingram Micro Cloud team, each demonstrating great potential to drive future cloud success for reseller partners within the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace. These finalists advance to the final round of competition judging, where they will compete for the $1 million global grand prize to be awarded later this year.
“The Comet Competition is a dream opportunity for us, and we’re proud to have reached the finals,” said Emmanuel Gras, co-founder and CEO, Alsid. “Being part of Ingram Micro Cloud ecosystem enables us to quickly scale globally to deliver our cloud-native technology to enterprises of all sizes.”
“Participating in the Comet Competition provided us with local and international exposure,” said Sirko Pelzl, CEO, apoQlar. “A great advantage of the Ingram Micro Cloud ecosystem is the company’s worldwide sales and service support for our customers.”
“The Comet Competition has given us amazing visibility and increased awareness,” said Chris Griffith, VP of business development and alliances, Balbix. “Ingram Micro Cloud allows us to quickly and cost-effectively reach thousands of cloud-ready partners, something we couldn't easily do on our own.”
“These three finalists truly represent the best of the best in go-to-market innovation,” said Michael Kenney, vice president of strategy and corporate development, Ingram Micro Cloud. “As industry leaders, we at Ingram Micro Cloud are thrilled to be part of their story.”
Kenney will be speaking with Jeffrey Ma, general manager of Microsoft for Startups, during the Microsoft Inspire virtual partner event on how the Microsoft startup ecosystem can drive profitability for partners. The digital session will take place on Thursday, July 23, from 5:15-5:45 a.m. PDT.
The Comet Competition is supported in part by Microsoft as part of a partnership between Microsoft’s Microsoft for Startups group and Ingram Micro Cloud.
About Alsid
Alsid was founded in 2016 by Luc Delsalle and Emmanuel Gras. They decided to start a company while they were security experts and colleagues working for Government entity ANSSI, the French National Cybersecurity Agency that ensures the security of French critical infrastructures. Alsid was born out of their extensive experience in mitigating and remediating the threats that targeted large companies, and more specifically Active Directory, which was vulnerable to attacks.
About apoQlar
apoQlar develops a medical software based on mixed reality and artificial intelligence, which supports physicians during surgeries and preparations, patient education, telesurgery, holoportation in order to make processes in hospitals safer and faster.
About Balbix
Balbix is the world’s first cybersecurity platform to leverage specialized AI to provide real-time visibility into an organization’s breach risk. The Balbix system predicts where and how breaches are likely to happen, prescribes prioritized mitigating actions, and enables workflows to address the underlying security issues. By using Balbix, CISOs and CIOs transform their organization’s cybersecurity posture, reducing cyber risk by 95% or more, while making security teams 10 times more efficient. Balbix counts many Global 1000 companies among its rapidly growing customer base and was named a “Cool Vendor” by Gartner in 2018. For more information, visit www.balbix.com.
About Ingram Micro Cloud
Ingram Micro Cloud brings together innovators and problems solvers to help the world accomplish more. It facilitates and manages the cloud’s complex digital value chain—all powered by CloudBlue technology. Ingram Micro Cloud operates in 64 countries with over 55,000 reseller partners, and its Cloud Marketplace serves 6.5 million seats, offering more than 120 cloud solutions. With unmatched global reach, easy access to automated go-to-market and integration tools, deep technical expertise, and a curated selection of scalable SaaS and IaaS solutions, Ingram Micro Cloud helps vendors, resellers and managed service providers by offering More as a Service. Detailed information is available at www.IngramMicroCloud.com.
