What issues and decisions would we like you to be pondering as a result of reading “Do you need to make a cloud investment?
The changes that we are already seeing in the software industry are structural and not transitional in nature. As a businessperson you cannot afford to miss structural changes in your business. The cloud looks like one of those structural changes. This is big news for a traditional reseller of on premise software.
If you have made money as a partner of a core set of vendors and distributors in the past you should look hard at the incumbents in your portfolio as a component of your cloud/SaaS business strategy. Ask your vendors people to show you the financial modeling that they have done to help you answer the how much, how long, how much questions about your transition plan. If you have not made an investment in a partnership with certain vendors in the past, you should seriously assess the “give and the get” associated with the cloud channel program as compared to the other cloud/SaaS investment opportunities being presented to you. Think clearly about the how much, how long, how much conversations you wish to have with the vendors you are considering investing in/with.
Related Tip Sheets
It is important to really think about how the decision to invest in a cloud/SaaS focused future might fit into the overall business strategy and plan that you are currently on a path to execute. We have to tell you that not all of your peers and competitors are doing this:
- Of the VARS researched by CompTIA, 90 per cent report that they are engaged in the cloud/IaaS business. If you really look hard at what they are actually doing more then half would tell you that there strategy is actually crumbling into place.
- More then 35 per cent of resellers reported in recent CompTIA research that they either have no business roadmap or only a partial business roadmap to guide their cloud/IaaS investments and strategy.
If 45-50 per cent of resellers have a cloud/SaaS strategy that has crumbled into place, and a further 30-40 per cent of resellers have no investment roadmap or only a partial investment roadmap to guide their cloud/SaaS strategy that leaves only 25-30 per cent of the resellers in the market with a consistent, coherent, consistent and scalable strategy. You want to be one of those partners with a clear strategy, accurate financial models and a practical business plan.
Now is the time to begin to focus on your cloud/SaaS business investment plan. You can be sure that your competitors are rapidly developing the ability to respond to your customer’s request for cloud/SaaS solutions. In the next installment we discuss lost sale analysis. We will provide a list of questions you need to be asking in the market. As a minimum, you need to develop your capability such that your cloud/SaaS offerings will at least be considered in a competitive situation.
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About Channelcorp
Margaret and Bruce Stuart founded Channelcorp in 1989. The firm is a global leader in the assistance of reseller, distributor and vendor clients. Channelcorp specializes in the business model transformation that is required in the face of the structural changes to recurring revenue driven business models in the worldwide IT business (www.channelcorp.com/services.php). Channelcorp publishes and sells four industry- leading books and 12 white papers (www.channelcorp.com/publications.php). This independent firm has delivered consulting and executive education to vendor, reseller and distribution clients in more then 40 emerging, developing and mature markets around the world. (www.channelcorp.com/workshops.php). More than 25,000 channel professionals from around the world subscribe to the newsletter Channelcorp intelligence (www.channelcorp.com/newsletter.php).