https://www.channelfutures.com/wp-content/themes/channelfutures_child/assets/images/logo/footer-new-logo.png
  • Home
  • Technologies
    • Back
    • SDN/SD-WAN
    • Cloud
    • RMM/PSA
    • Security
    • Telephony/UC/Collaboration
    • Cable
    • Mobility & Wireless
    • Fiber/Ethernet
    • Data Centers
    • Backup & Disaster Recovery
    • IoT
    • Desktop
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Analytics
  • Strategy
    • Back
    • Mergers and Acquisitions
    • Channel Research
    • Business Models
    • Distribution
    • Technology Solutions Brokerages
    • Sales & Marketing
    • Best Practices
    • Vertical Markets
    • Regulation & Compliance
  • MSP 501
    • Back
    • 2022 MSP 501 Rankings
    • 2022 NextGen 101 Rankings
  • Intelligence
    • Back
    • Galleries
    • Podcasts
    • From the Industry
    • Reports/Digital Issues
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
  • Channel Futures TV
  • EMEA
  • Channel Chatter
    • Back
    • People on the Move
    • New/Changing Channel Programs
    • New Products & Services
    • Industry Honors
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Advisory Boards
    • Industry Organizations
    • Our Sponsors
    • Advertise
    • 2023 Editorial Calendar
  • Awards
    • Back
    • 2022 MSP 501
    • Channel Influencers
    • Circle of Excellence
    • DE&I 101
    • Technology Advisor 101 (TA 101)
  • Events
    • Back
    • 2023 Call for Speakers
    • CP Conference & Expo
    • MSP Summit
    • Channel Partners Europe
    • Channel Partners Event Coverage
    • Webinars
    • Industry Events
  • About Us
  • DE&I
Channel Futures
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Home
  • Technologies
    • Back
    • SDN/SD-WAN
    • Cloud
    • RMM/PSA
    • Security
    • Telephony/UC/Collaboration
    • Cable
    • Mobility & Wireless
    • Fiber/Ethernet
    • Data Centers
    • Backup & Disaster Recovery
    • IoT
    • Desktop
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Analytics
  • Strategy
    • Back
    • Mergers and Acquisitions
    • Channel Research
    • Business Models
    • Distribution
    • Technology Solutions Brokerages
    • Sales & Marketing
    • Best Practices
    • Vertical Markets
    • Regulation & Compliance
  • MSP 501
    • Back
    • 2022 MSP 501 Rankings
    • 2022 NextGen 101 Rankings
  • Intelligence
    • Back
    • Galleries
    • Podcasts
    • From the Industry
    • Reports/Digital Issues
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
  • Channel Futures TV
  • EMEA
  • Channel Chatter
    • Back
    • People on the Move
    • New/Changing Channel Programs
    • New Products & Services
    • Industry Honors
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Advisory Boards
    • Industry Organizations
    • Our Sponsors
    • Advertise
    • 2023 Editorial Calendar
  • Awards
    • Back
    • 2022 MSP 501
    • Channel Influencers
    • Circle of Excellence
    • DE&I 101
    • Technology Advisor 101 (TA 101)
  • Events
    • Back
    • 2023 Call for Speakers
    • CP Conference & Expo
    • MSP Summit
    • Channel Partners Europe
    • Channel Partners Event Coverage
    • Webinars
    • Industry Events
  • About Us
  • DE&I
    • Newsletter
  • REGISTER
  • MSPs
  • VARs / SIs
  • Agents
  • Cloud Service Providers
  • Channel Partners Events
 Channel Futures

Security


Cloud Sales

3 Best Practices for Selling Cloud

  • Written by Channel
  • March 6, 2016
From managing overhead to building value-added services, how to maximize income.

Brian SingerBy Brian Singer

Enterprise demand for cloud solutions – both infrastructure and applications – presents a tremendous opportunity for managed service providers and value-added resellers. But, as an MSP or a VAR entering this brave new world, you must beware: There are pitfalls that can diminish margins, negatively impact efficiency and make the cloud an unprofitable business venture.

 Reselling cloud solutions is not just a simple technology transition. It requires a fundamental retooling of the business model — from an understanding of consumption-based billing and how to price offerings to a new platform that supports greater automation and hiring employees with the skill sets to support cloud offerings.

There is very little margin or differentiation if you simply pass through cloud solutions on a resale basis. Instead, where the opportunity – and profit – lie is in understanding how to add value to that cloud offering. Successful cloud resellers are the ones who excel at identifying and delivering what doesn’t come out of the box.

But even offering these types of value-added services may not be enough. You also need to drive excessive costs out of your operations wherever you can. If your company is not operationally efficient, the costs related to activities, such as provisioning and billing, could overwhelm you.

As your company adds cloud solutions to your mix of offerings, there are three best practices to employ. With these, you can ensure you’re delivering what your customers need without losing profitability to operational challenges:

1. Manage overhead wisely: For a classic reseller, cloud solutions, by nature, are not very sticky. Your company could do all the work to build and sell a solution, but, because of the flexible nature of the cloud, a customer could easily take its business to another provider to manage the service delivery. To be successful, you need to make investments to provide end-to-end service excellence. It’s at this step where automation is critical. Consumption-based models, monthly billing requirements and repetitive tasks related to provisioning services need to be streamlined and automated before they become a huge burden on your organization and eat into profit margins.

For example, CorpInfo, a premier AWS consulting partner, faced a difficult process involving considerable time and effort to produce bills for its clients, many of which spend in the high six-figures for AWS-related deliverables. CorpInfo implemented a streamlined cloud-billing solution, which enabled it to reduce billing overhead by 90 percent. By eliminating billing delays, human error and administrative processing time, CorpInfo has been able to focus on increasing its customer base and delivering excellent service to those customers.

2. Accurately calculate volume discounts: As a reseller purchasing cloud services, you will get discounts for buying in bulk and be able to serve many customers with the capacity you purchase. The challenge is understanding the right level of discount to pass onto each customer, when to recommend that the customer prepay for services and when to prepay for services yourself. You will have to adopt the same type of billing methodologies that cloud providers use to ensure you understand the complexities of consumption-based usage and how to appropriately apply discounts for customers without sabotaging your margins.
In a typical example, a reseller can cut their customer’s bill and double or triple margins by effectively optimizing their billing with a cloud provider.

3. Make cloud just a portion of your overall offering: Even though businesses are moving many applications to the cloud, plenty of others still remain in private data centers, whether because of security concerns or because it’s more economical. With businesses taking this hybrid approach, it’s important that you don’t limit yourself with cloud-only offerings. You also need to add value to your offering by delivering solutions for security or compliance that can go hand-in-hand with cloud services, or by assembling all the various IT pieces into an efficient system for your customers.

In addition, avoid offering one-off services for each and every customer; instead, build a set of homogenous services that can apply across your customer base, and automate these as much as possible to leverage efficiencies. In our experience, the margin from selling and configuring these standardized services is often greater than the cloud services themselves, and organizations that do this well are able to offer better service at lower cost to their customers.

By implementing these secrets to success, you can take advantage of the opportunities that the cloud presents to your business and deliver them to your customers in a way that increases revenues and gives you an advantage in today’s hyper-competitive environment.

Brian Singer is co-founder and senior vice president, products and marketing, for Orbitera, a leader in cloud commerce. Prior to Orbitera, Singer held key roles in business development and product marketing at BMC and Novell. He earned a Master’s in Business Administration from the MIT Sloan School and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from Brown University. Follow him on Twitter @Orbitera.

Tags: Agents Business Models Cloud Data Centers EMEA Security

Most Recent


  • Making Waves
    7 Channel People Making Waves This Week at 8x8, Intel, Google Cloud, RingCentral, More
    Google, which says it's cutting 12,000 workers, has not indicated how the layoffs impact Google Cloud.
  • Man's silhouette behind a transparent cell graphic and the letters RMM
    Hackers Use Legitimate RMM Software to Steal from Federal Employees
    Attacks on RMMs have caused "insurmountable" losses for SMBs.
  • INtelisys AMP'd Newport Beach 2023
    Intelisys AMP'd Images: Partners Explore B2B Purchasing Trends, CX, Security Solutions
    Customers "literally don't know" how their own buying journey works, and that's an opportunity for partners.
  • Crime scene
    Intel Earnings ‘A Crime Scene,’ ‘Astonishingly Bad,’ ‘Historic Collapse’
    Financial analysts and market experts are in shock after Intel delivered its worst results in 20 years.

Leave a comment Cancel reply

-or-

Log in with your Channel Futures account

Alternatively, post a comment by completing the form below:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Content

  • Conflict Boxing Gloves
    Channel Conflict, Controversy: SolarWinds Hack, Racism, Layoffs, Zoom-RingCentral
  • Social media smartphone
    Social Media Roundup: Partners Talk Crypto, Security Hiring
  • Europe skyline
    The Master Agent Model Is Taking Off in Europe
  • PlanetOne Gainey Golf Event Feature
    PlanetOne Golf Event: In-Person Channel Networking Makes Big Comeback

Upcoming Events

View all

Channel Partners Conference & Expo

May 1, 2023 - May 4, 2023

Channel Partners Europe

June 13, 2023 - June 14, 2023

Channel Futures Leadership Summit

October 30, 2023 - November 2, 2023

Galleries

View all

7 Channel People Making Waves This Week at 8×8, Intel, Google Cloud, RingCentral, More

January 27, 2023

Intelisys AMP’d Images: Partners Explore B2B Purchasing Trends, CX, Security Solutions

January 27, 2023

Intel Earnings ‘A Crime Scene,’ ‘Astonishingly Bad,’ ‘Historic Collapse’

January 27, 2023

Industry Perspectives

View all

Make the Most of the Gift of Time in 2023

January 25, 2023

Strong Partnerships Ease Challenging UPS Upgrade

January 24, 2023

The Advantages of Managed Networking and Security During Economic Uncertainty

January 5, 2023

Webinars

View all

Next-Generation MSP Platform: The Building Blocks for Your Business

February 15, 2023

Security Secrets of the MSP 501: How to Be a Cyber Leader in 2023

December 15, 2022
  • 1

Cybersecurity Certifications: Their Evolving Role in the Fight Against Increasing Attacks

December 13, 2022

White Papers

View all

Overcoming Your Endpoint Security Limitations with a Skeleton Crew

October 25, 2022

Embracing the Zero Trust Mindset For Endpoints

October 24, 2022

Endpoints are the Destination

October 24, 2022

Channel Futures TV

View all

Coffee with Craig and James Episode 117: Cato Networks, Video Killed the Podcast Stars

Retired Astronaut Capt. Scott Kelly Previews His CP Expo Keynote

December 21, 2022

Fusion Connect Eyes Future with Intrado UC, Managed Network Customers

September 23, 2022

RingCentral Focused on Hybrid Work, Microsoft Teams, Other Integrations

September 23, 2022

Twitter

ChannelFutures

Cybersecurity advisory warns of hackers' malicious use of #RMM. @CISACyber dlvr.it/ShYRwg https://t.co/zsBvQWqOYY

January 27, 2023
ChannelFutures

Reaction to #Intel earnings coming in fast and furious. Find out what investors are saying, and how CEO Pat Gelsing… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

January 27, 2023
ChannelFutures

Our latest #GatelyReport looks at #cybersecurity M&A, investment with @progresspartner, @cyber_advisory, @FBI Hive… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

January 27, 2023
ChannelFutures

.@channelsmart says plan and boost client #retention efforts to reduce #churn. dlvr.it/ShXvhj https://t.co/4jyHPCjTBn

January 27, 2023
ChannelFutures

The CEO of @Mitel discusses the likely outcomes of buying @Atos Unify. Note: @RingCentral will play a role post acq… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

January 26, 2023
ChannelFutures

.@msftsecurity surpasses $20 billion in annual revenue, analysts say it's a formidable #cybersecurity market conten… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

January 26, 2023
ChannelFutures

The adoption of cloud-based services ☁️ has spiked in the last few years and is among the top growth segments. See… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

January 26, 2023
ChannelFutures

[email protected], @NICECXone, @lumencpp, @CiscoPartners joined @IntelisysCorp and partners for a day of marketing worksho… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

January 26, 2023

MSP 501

The industry's largest and most comprehensive partner awards program.

Newsletters and Updates

Sign up for The Channel Report, Channel Futures Update, MSP 501 Newsletter and more.

Live Channel Events

Get the latest information on the next industry-leading Channel Partners event.

Galleries

Educational slide shows and images from live events.

Media Kit And Advertising

Want to reach our audience? Access our media kit.

DISCOVER MORE FROM INFORMA TECH

  • Channel Partners Events
  • Telecoms.com
  • MSP 501
  • Black Hat
  • IoT World Today
  • Omdia

WORKING WITH US

  • Contact
  • About Us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter

FOLLOW Channel Futures ON SOCIAL

  • Privacy
  • CCPA: “Do Not Sell My Data”
  • Cookie Policy
  • Terms
Copyright © 2023 Informa PLC. Informa PLC is registered in England and Wales with company number 8860726 whose registered and Head office is 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG.
This website uses cookies, including third party ones, to allow for analysis of how people use our website in order to improve your experience and our services. By continuing to use our website, you agree to the use of such cookies. Click here for more information on our Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy.
X