Bangalore: Cloud is emerging as major contributor for channel partners as a recent Pulsant white paper, entitled ‘Channel and the cloud: opportunities, challenges and what businesses really think‘ found that 97% of channel companies had experienced growth over the last 12 months. A major portion of the growth has come from Cloud.
According to the Pulsant, 104 IT resellers in different sized organisations across various industries attributed their growth to four main factors: new talent (63%), incorporating SaaS or cloud into their product offering (47%), working with a cloud services provider and marketing initiatives (both 37%).
Two of the growth factors claimed in the finding were cloud-based. This ascertains that cloud is productive for the channel. These figures appear to show that, for many resellers, the cloud is already growth booster.
Chris Roberts, channel director at Pulsant affirms “a powerful indication of the strength of the market” where channel has been acclimatizing with the new business environment which is brought by the Cloud.
The cloud opportunities which were sounded vague and sometimes difficult for the channel to comprehend, over the past few years were adopted well by them. They understood the importance, business implications and profitability from this. But we will have to wait and watch the how the figures will be like over a period of time when more partners will embrace the transition to become SaaS or cloud providers.
The research found that 96% of those surveyed believed their cloud opportunities had been realised and 90% of those surveyed were becoming cloud or SaaS providers.
However, once they get on that track, they will come up against some very significant issues that could directly affect their businesses. Pulsant’s research show that where those resellers shifting to become SaaS or cloud providers cited service delivery, difficulty in finding the right cloud provider and adjusting to a new business model.
In that case, Resellers would need enough support from vendors and distributors over the intervening period to ensure that their transformation to SaaS or cloud providers becomes as easy and hassle-free process as possible.