When cloud made its advent, IT providers did not see much amazement as customers were not ready for the cloud. There were also apparent cash flow problems for which their efforts did not bear optimum fruit as they were not sure how to monetize cloud services.
Ten years past, cloud has established itself as a core technology, that is sought after by large enterprises and SMBs.
As the technology is gaining strength, there lies opportunity for IT service providers who now have more scope to offer the technology to the customers.
A new study from Informatica and Deloitte has found that cloud is now becoming the “dominant vehicle” for business analytics. The report, entitled “The State of Cloud Analytics 2016,” reveals that cloud is a key part of the analytics strategy of 70.1 per cent of surveyed organisations, while an additional 21.6 per cent stated that it is an important part of their analytics adoption. [Read the full report here]
India remains to be a prominent market for cloud technology adoption. The overall Cloud Market in India in 2016 is pegged at $3-3.5 billion, of which the Public Cloud share would be $1.1-1.2 billion. The cloud spending in India will further exceed to $10 billion by 2020 says research firm, Zinnov. This clearly indicates huge opportunity for the channel.
Bank on a subscription-based revenue model:
Vendors should make a clear outline for Channel partners and help them identify their cloud requirement. Once they understand what kind of cloud is required they are more confident to take it to the customers.
An impediment in the way of MSPs in transitioning to cloud is cash flow as their business model is built around selling solutions and receiving the revenue for it upfront.
To keep the revenue flow uninterrupted, they should acquaint their customers to cloud and then facilitate them with subscription model of cloud.
Distributor- vendor partnership is the key:
A good partnership between vendor and channel partner helps to a great extent for channel companies. It helps the partners to learn how to get started with a cloud business.
While large vendors have a more robust partner ecosystem, smaller cloud vendors struggle to offer optimum channel support like training, lead generation programs etc.
They are now required to provide pro-active, around the clock support with application to achieve high value and margin differentiation, and to stand out against the competition.
For channel partners seeking to strike new relationships with cloud vendors, the shift can mean developing new approaches to their businesses, propagating a strong marketing strategy, adjusting the way customers are billed, and changing the way services are provided to customers once they’ve adopted a cloud offering.
Differentiating services is significant:
When channel partners are ready to take up a cloud business, it then becomes important to learn how to differentiate in the market.
Cloud projects will be easier to handle if vendors pool in their technical expertise to a cloud migration project.
At times, it may also become difficult to enter the market as there too many players, thus offering products and solution as per requirement and demarcating a differentiation such as expertise in an industry solution or around some specific type of technology to the customer makes sense.
Vendors should work with channel partners on developing superior skills and deliver better customer service by transferring knowledge and leveraging the channel’s expertise in wider and specific markets.