After a four-year tenure at technology distributor Ingram Micro, executive vice president and CIO, Mario Leone is leaving his position. He will help with the transition through March 1. Ingram Micro’s executive vice president, global business process and cloud computing, Nimesh Dave, will take over Leone’s responsibilities until a successor is found.

Leone is responsible for significant improvements to Ingram Micro’s IT and Business Information Systems including implementation of a global network and mapping out the company’s IT architecture.

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But just in case you need more validation of the fact that businesses do, in fact, care about technology energy efficiency, materials make-up and so on, consider that massive technology distributor Ingram Micro has just signed a deal with EPEAT, the system that the federal government and an increasing number of companies are using to gauge the green credentials of the hardware they are interested in buying.

In case you don’t know EPEAT, the name is actually short for the Electronics Product Environmental Assessment Tool. The system covers a number of IT categories, including displays, integrated systems, notebooks, desktops, thin clients and workstations; in the future, it will cover things including printing and imaging devices, servers and mobile phones. There are more than 3,200 products covered in the database (from 48 different manufacturers).

EPEAT designates the green-ness of a given product, by looking at things such as energy efficiency, the materials used within the equipment, and the services that are offered around the product in terms of end-of-life management (including reuse or recycling). The system is used to help determine which products in a given category have a better story to tell with respect to some of those metrics.

Ingram Micro has already been integrating EPEAT information into its solution provider catalogs. Under the extended relationship, starting the fourth quarter, the distributor will be able to help solution providers become EPEAT Channel Partners. That means they will be officially qualified to “sell” the value of the EPEAT information. They will also be featured on the EPEAT Web site.

Whether or not your organization has a green agenda, some of the metrics covered under EPEAT such as energy efficiency and lifecycle management policies are more general issues of interest to a growing number of buyers. This alliance is a smart move on both the part of Ingram Micro, which can help provide a differentiator for some of its reseller customers, and for EPEAT, which can continue pushing its visibility out of government agencies and into the business world.

About a month ago, I wrote about ValCom, which has managed to get around the “direct” specter in some enterprise accounts because it could manage the process of taking aged technology out of service. For those of you waiting for more proof that green IT could be more lucrative than it seems, it’s here: the world’s biggest technology distributor Ingram Micro has just launched a Smart Steward recycling program.

The initiative will help VARs and solution providers handle the disposal of small electronics and printer suppliers. Ingram MIcro has teamed up with a third party to handle the process, Clover Technologies.

Realistically, this is just a baby step: it just covers things like printer cartridges and phones right now, not necessarily big stuff like massive servers. For that sort of thing, technology solution providers will need to team up with companies that have certifications in e-waste disposal. The two big ones to look for is anyone that holds an e-Steward certification, a program that was originally started by the Basel Action Network, or a company that upholds the Responsible Recycling policies that were developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

ValCom works with CloudBlue, which is one of the e-Steward recyclers that is explicitly looking to become involved with technology solution providers. Another company that took the e-Stewards plunge more recently is the massive aluminum processing company, Alcoa. So, this certification will have legs because the stuff that is being taken out of consumer electronics devices has a “value” at the end of life that isn’t accounted for right now.

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The software that NextGen provides is focused on the so-called ambulatory healthcare provider, smaller clinics or doctors’ offices where patients aren’t staying overnight. The application is available in both an on-premise license or as a service that physicans can pay for on-demand.

Bob LaClede, vice president of business development for the distributor, says Ingram Micro currently supports about 6,000 VARs in the healthcare business, of which there are about 300 great candidates to represent the NextGen solution.

He says Ingram Micro took particular care to ensure that it evaluated both the merits of the application AND NextGen’s ability to support and work closely with channel partners. Some developers that Ingram Micro evaluated, for example, had great technology but very little support in terms of marketing or field development for VARs and resellers that sign on to represent their products. Ingram Micro also trained NextGen in how to work with Ingram Micro customers.

The NextGen relationship dovetails with Ingram Micro’s IMHealth program, and there are also synergies with the distributor’s effort to help resellers tap funds that could be available to them through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

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Both Twitter.com/VTNcommunity and Facebook.com/venturetechnetwork were unveiled Monday. The target audience is the 300-plus VTN VAR members in North America.

“We went from an unlaunched Facebook page this weekend and had 100 members and climbing by this morning,” said John Fago, senior director of channel marketing for Ingram Micro.

In fact, for most in IT, a Twitter feed and Facebook page are now just part of the price of doing business. And a low price at that. VARs have their own Twitter feeds and Facebook pages and use them to talk up their client work and prospect for new hires.

“It’s not a huge investment. These tools are free and easy to use. At the click of a button you get access to 30,000 people,” Fago said.

The new tools were announced a the VentureTech Network Fall 2009 Invitational in Denver on Monday.

One interesting statistic to share from a keynote this morning by Gartner analyst and vice president Tiffani Bova (actually lots of stats, but that’s for another post or two). Gartner’s recent survey of business models for about 140 or so channel types (call ‘em VARs, technology solution providers, etc.) uncovered the rather intriguing finding that only 19 percent of the respondents were generating more than 50 percent of their revenue from recurring services. So, despite the fact that many companies call themselves managed service providers (MSPs), there actually probably aren’t ENTIRELY driven by that sort of revenue model.

This is music to the ears of Justin Crotty, vice president of services sales for Ingram Micro, and it jibes with his own team is finding. Turns out that some of the most successful MSPs in Crotty’s acquaintance are hybrids. They still have a healthy product revenue stream and, indeed, often use projects involving a combination of products and professional services as the entry point for their managed services engagements, Crotty says. “IT needs to be a balanced approach,” he says.

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