Before jumping into research, Bova was involved in an MSP organization that involved Intel and she also worked in the hosting market.

Cloud won’t happen as fast as expected without channel partners, especially in the SMB market, engaged in the effort.

Cloud and mobile didn’t cause us to use fewer devices. The typical person now has about four IT or communications devices.

The result: The new personal PC is actually “personal cloud.”

The opportunity is the hybrid cloud.

Cloud Aggregators: In the US distributors are making moves; outside the US, telcos are making cloud aggregator moves. Throughout the event, cloud aggregators were described as companies that offer multiple third-party cloud services to channel partners.

Cloud Integration Brokerage: Appirio and CloudSherpas are examples here. The typical cloud integration brokerage has some cloud software development expertise.

If you can’t do usage-based billing then you can’t do cloud.

“It doesn’t matter who bills. What matters is how you’ll customize for the end-user.”

Biggest cloud spender will be marketing departments rather than the IT department. MSPs should talk to marketing departments as customers rather than IT.

In the midmarket, the top IT priority is increasing the use of cloud services (4o% of respondents offered that answer to Gartner).

Once customers move up to four cloud services they need channel partners — reinvented as cloud services brokerages — in a big way.

Reselling cloud isn’t the opportunity.

Strongest and most intelligent don’t matter. Be the most adaptable to change to win in the cloud.