CLOUD PARTNERS — A Cloud Partners panel discussion Wednesday in Boston on the rise of the cloud broker sparked a lively conversation on the positives, negatives and challenges of this growing market.

A cloud broker is a third-party individual or business that acts as an intermediary between the buyer of a cloud computing service and the sellers of that service. A broker also acts as an intermediary during negotiations.

Panelist Scott Markley, nGenX’s channel sales executive, said there have been some early adopters, with companies like Cloud Taskforce that have “done a great job of positioning themselves in the space.”

“I think we’ll continue to see more of this, and there’s going to be some consolidation as well, as entities, talents and skillsets get brought in under one umbrella to better serve the end client,” he said.

Other panelists included David Sebestyen, Cloud Taskforce’s managing director; Lawrence Lee, Unitas Global’s executive vice president of partner alliances; and Sean Patrick Tario, Open Spectrum’s president.

Sebestyen said it is important that “folks who are in the channel, that have come from maybe the more traditional side, are expanding their minds and trying to understand how to get into this business because it’s the future.”

“If they don’t, they’re going to struggle,” he said. “So I’m really excited to see the number of people and the good amount of folks who are thinking about IT and cloud, and how to do it right and not go into it bull-headed.”

Lee said his best advice for cloud brokers is to understand all of the cloud environments out there.

Tario said that cloud technology is so complex that you “need to bring in partners who are specialists, who have technical expertise and background in the technology to add value in that conversation with your clients.”

Telecom brokering needs to incorporate more and more services that are cloud-based, and “just standing on the network-services piece alone is probably not a business model that will last for very long,” Sebestyen said.

“What’s happening is the folks who are in IT and are selling IT are going to start selling that network services, and they are going to possess the mindshare of the client because they’re talking about the real critical stuff that CEOs care about,” he said.