By Ryan Brock

We have all heard the storyline on how cloud is poised for meteoric growth. And there is certainly a great deal of truth to this. AMI Partners’ latest research shows that overall investments in cloud solutions are growing at a rate three to four times that of on-premises products and services. However, many cloud providers and channel partners tell us that they have not yet seen this growth reflected in their businesses. Unfortunately this doesn’t come as a surprise.

Despite the overall cloud growth trend, the truth is that the opportunity is not spread evenly across all solution areas and customer segments. In fact, it is concentrated in a few key areas. And this leaves many partners wondering why their investments in time and resources have yet to yield the results that they would have expected.

To help partners home in on the real opportunities in cloud, separating fact from the fiction is a good starting point. To that end, here are three of the top myths about cloud: 

Myth 1: Cloud is growing fast in all segments. The reality is that cloud is growing relatively slowly for businesses that have fewer than 20 employees, which is more than two-thirds of all small and medium businesses (SMBs). Small businesses (with 20-100 employees) are beginning to move workloads such as email and collaboration to the cloud. And the strongest growth is among midmarket firms (with 100-1000 employees), who have the resources to fully manage cloud migration across applications and infrastructure.

Myth 2: Partners must go all-in for cloud or risk going out of business. This is the one sound bite that we get the strongest reaction to among partners. Many industry pundits have long predicted the demise of the “traditional” channel partner that hasn’t fully transitioned to a cloud-focused business model.  The truth is that 85 percent of customer investments still are allocated to on-premises and hybrid solutions. While we advise partners to take steps to bring cloud into their portfolios, a measured approach with a focus on extending on-premises offerings with cloud components is a much more sound approach.

Myth 3: Partners need to change the way they market and sell solutions for the cloud. I cringe when I hear industry analysts tell partners that to be successful in selling cloud they need to first “fire all of their salespeople.” The reality is that when we identified the sales and marketing activities used by the most successful cloud partners, many are the same ones used by successful non-cloud partners. Face-to-face, relationship-based selling still generates the highest revenue impact, followed by tried-and-true methods, such as publishing thought leadership perspectives and attending or hosting events. We work with lots of partners and their sales teams to develop strategies and approaches to sell cloud solutions, and in our experience the vast majority of the existing staff are fully capable of engaging customers in cloud discussions and creating opportunities.

These are just a few of the many fallacies that create unnecessary anxiety for partners as they consider their transition to the cloud. The first step toward helping these partners accelerate their progress is to make sure they have a firm grounding in the realities of the opportunities and the challenges. 

Ryan Brock is senior vice president of  worldwide channels at Access Markets International (AMI) Partners Inc. where helps suppliers and their channels with market intelligence and business practice consulting spanning all aspects of the evolving technology footprint including infrastructure, platforms, applications, communications, services and devices.
Twitter: @cloudbystorm, @ami_partners
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ryanbrock2010

MORE INFO

Learn more from AMI Partners’ Ryan Brock in the session, “Bring Me a Higher Cloud: Separating Fact From Fiction & Focusing on What Works,” at Cloud Partners, a Channel Partners event, Sept. 8-10, in New Orleans.