We are now experiencing one of the biggest waves of IT transformation in history. Cloud is part of it and Big Data is another part of it. Cloud is becoming more and more into a reality. It is changing from “nice to have”, into a “must have” IT asset. Cloud is transforming IT into a service and this is becoming into a reality today. On the other hand data is growing at an enormous rate and in an exponential manner – you cannot control or manage it anymore. This is happening in certain market segments like media, healthcare, CTV, oil and gas, research and development.
Vendors today have a choice to provide Cloud services themselves as a service provider or to provide technologies, products and solutions for partners to transform themselves into service providers. These are mutually exclusive choices! Vendors cannot be a service provider themselves and also compete with partner service providers. Wherever Cloud meets Big Data, vendors need to be able to provide a complete portfolio of solutions that cover data availability, data reliability, data security, data virtualisation and data leveraging.
Vendors that provide such a range of solutions can actively help their partners go though the IT transformation process. In fact for partners to sell Cloud services, vendors need to have special channel programmes to make this happen. Typically vendors would find themselves in build, operate and transfer mode with their partners. They would help partners to build their business, operate the solutions for them and then transfer the knowledge and know how to their partners – an end to end enablement and activation.
Cloud channel programmes also need to have extra rebates, extra margins and incentives to boost the bottom line margins of partners as they develop and scale their business. Vendors also need to develop Cloud solutions and products that are optimised for sell through the channel and not necessarily through high touch.
We are now experiencing one of the biggest waves of IT transformation in history. Cloud is part of it and Big Data is another part of it.
