Type of cloud. There are significant differences between public, private, hybrid, and virtual private offerings. They all meet very specific business needs, but consumer interest and service-provider commoditization have caused businesses to misuse each offering. For example, Amazon (largely credited with the invention of the public cloud) targets the Web application development, testing and research communities. Although the terms and conditions specifically state what data should be placed in that cloud, it hasnt stopped customers and their partners from moving mission-critical and other sensitive data there. It also hasnt prevented service providers from building their own offerings on top of Amazons public infrastructure. Its important to make sure that the abilities of the cloud youve chosen will be able to fulfill your customers business objectives. While the public cloud might be an inexpensive option, it doesnt meet most standard business requirements for privacy and security. If you dont know what kind of cloud youre proposing to your customer, find out.

The also” cloud. The Microsoft survey mentioned above also found an important fact that surprised the industry: Businesses that are looking to move more services to the cloud want to do so with the same vendor. Unfortunately, most pure-play cloud providers focus on doing one thing and doing it well (email, HPBX, desktop, etc). But now, based on customer demand, many of these providers (as well as traditional carriers) have decided to quickly cobble together additional cloud products or start reselling other clouds to look like all-in-one commercial offerings. Channel partners must ask the tough questions to understand if their provider is actually delivering that cloud or someone elses also” cloud.

Cloud infrastructure. IP lowers the barrier of entry for service providers as much as it does for customers. This means that it doesnt take a lot of expense to start up a few servers and get in the game. The issue is that it takes a ton of money to do it right, and its the channel partners job to make sure its customers understand what they are getting into. Platform and software manufacturers, open-source or supported, dedicated or high-availability, speed and type of storage, geographic diversity, security and third-party auditing, and compliance on systems and process these factors and more have to be considered, understood and dealt with by a channel partner. Thats not a trivial task that an organization can get involved with quickly and take lightly. Remember, just because a billion-dollar carrier is offering a cloud service doesnt mean it has invested billions of dollars in its new cloud offering.

Oversimplifying and over
promising. I often have potential customers tell me that our competition promised to help the customer move everything to the cloud and support its end-users, both for no additional fee. This is simply misleading. Despite what many cloud service providers tell you, moving to the cloud requires the customers IT staff, who know the business, to take part in the migration. There is no magic wand that makes everything appear in the cloud. These promises seem attractive to the channel partner because they can offer an on-ramp to the cloud without effort and expense. But when the service provider says no,” your customer will be blaming you for your poor recommendation.

Misunderstanding continuity. Its true that the cloud provides disaster recovery that customers generally cant afford by themselves. A well-designed offering is built on the right equipment, in a proper enterprise-class data center, with high availability built in. However, moving something to the cloud does not mean that its served from all over the world automatically. Generally, cloud providers dont move your customers critical apps and content, free of charge, to the West Coast if the East Coast experiences an outage, and vice versa. The customer will still have to buy resources elsewhere to make this happen. And while many cloud providers offer services to support this level of continuity, failures in the cloud are not unheard of. The bottom line: Setting the wrong expectations in the beginning will lead to a real problem when disaster strikes.