Emphasize Services. Services, Services, Services

Christian Alvarez, senior vice president of worldwide channels at Nutanix. Nutanix sells cloud services, including disaster recovery and desktops, all as a service, through the channel:

“The move to subscription- and consumption-based buying has changed the traditional channel-vendor relationship to follow an everything-as-a-service model, and IT infrastructure is no exception.

“This is likely to impact channel sales but it also provides a strong opportunity for resellers to provide professional services on top of the cloud software sales they’re already making. According to IDC research, services have become an increasingly significant portion of partners’ revenue mix over time, and will become even more critical for partners’ success as the industry moves toward subscription models. With the rapid adoption of cloud software happening right now, the faster the channel can build up professional services offerings to support customers in that adoption, the more they, and their customers, will have to gain from the cloud.”

Larry Kraft, senior vice president, global channels and alliances at CloudBolt, a cloud management platform provider:

Partners must re-cast their own charters. They must understand the client’s world is becoming “everything as a service.” They need to be the trusted delivery agent in that world. This isn’t about more software; it’s about understanding the opportunity to bring the promise of “cloud” to every client, no matter where they are in their cloud journey.