Rethinking Partner Enablement For Cloud

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Author: Cam Wayland We are working with a vendor that is transitioning its portfolio of products and partners to be more annuity or XaaS orientated. This includes evaluating their partner enablement material and approach so either existing or new partners could successfully sell the Cloud or XaaS solutions. Our findings suggest that using the same … Continued

Rethinking The Value Of Customers In A Cloudy World

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Recently we have been working with a number of service providers building out their channel and XaaS offerings. The first part of the process is helping them to clearly define their target customer, and as a result what will be the best type of partner to acquire and service this customer. The second thing we … Continued

Are Service Providers Partners Or Customers?

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I often conduct strategy discussions with vendors who sell through Service Providers, and at some point during the meeting, I’ll ask the question – are Service Providers (ie. Managed Service Providers, Telcos, Cloud providers, etc) your Customer or your Partner? The answer is usually something like “well sometimes they’re customers and sometimes they’re partners but … Continued

Customer Life Cycle Management and The Cloud

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Customer life cycle management is an important issue for every business selling cloud services. Where there was once traditional solution selling around a large capital item followed by install and management, we are now seeing the consumption of IT as a service driven by cloud technologies. Cloud services are usually billed monthly over a fixed … Continued

Is There A Need For The Channel In The Cloud?

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There is no doubt that customers are starting to examine how they procure technology, and opting for a Cloud model rather than the traditional CapEx model. However, while this shift may provide a range of benefits for the customer and potentially the channel, it also brings with it some fundamental changes to the way technology … Continued