Hot technologies and markets for the channel in 2012 Part 4

Value Added Cloud

Where would any self-respecting prediction list be without reference to the cloud! Every vendor seems to have jumped in feet first with cloud happily tacked onto just about every possible permutation of product. You would assume that the market is saturated and a done deal. Well the reality is that customers – remember, the ones who pay for things – have, by and large, not yet boarded the good ship cloud for various reasons. There is an opportunity for a new breed of channel partner that understands not just the cloud but legacy systems to help then make that switch. One of the biggest areas is office productivity, of which, Microsoft is still the dominant player. Another area is unified communications, and the last area ripe for moving to  the cloud is backup and recovery.

The vendors and the technology

If you start with Microsoft, the vendor has been careful to keep the channel on-board for its cloud push  and training courses such as Microsoft online services enablement and activation programme are examples of ways in which the channel learn the skills needed to adapt from box shifting to service selling.

Vendors like Avaya, that have focused “on-premise” are now in the process of launching add-ons like its Avaya web alive, which adds cloud-based collaboration tools to compliment traditional local hardware and software. Microsoft is still the one to watch in this space if you combine the launch of LYNC, the purchase of Skype and the dominance of its mail, collaboration, and Office suite.

The potential versus the pitfalls

If you think that the channel is still fairly ignorant of the cloud, can you imagine what most customers that have used on-premise for the last 20 years are expecting from the new “magic bullet”? The reality is that the more experienced hands recognise a paradigm shift, although this could be another false start like the Application Service Provider of the early part of last decade. In many cases, the technology is relatively straightforward; what the channel needs to succeed is the desire to go out and sell a solution while recognising that the business model is fundamentally going to change. The notion of the big sell is being replaced by a steady monthly revenue stream. On-going customer service will be critical in a world where resellers are selling services delivered by third parties with minimal value-add.

Some sectors of the channel will tell you that the cloud could mean that partners will be cut out of the loop in favour of direct relationships – and in some commodity IT sectors that may well be the case. But the on-going trend to outsource IT as a function to a third party is considerable, and small businesses which make up the majority of the UK tend to like working with a supplier that treats them as an important client and not just another faceless number. The danger is that channel partners that don’t invest in customer service elements are likely to struggle in a cloudy future dominated by service not technological wizardry.

Summary

The cost and flexibility benefits touted by vendors and often endorsed by customers are hard to  ignore – cloud  will be a hot area over the next few years. Finding the cloud element of a technology or business area that you already compete in is probably the best method of gaining a foothold in this brave new world.