Resellers and cloud providers need to play dating game

Another opinion

We read Tim Ayling’s assessment of the UK channel landscape, and couldn’t disagree more with his conclusions. Mimecast is a cloud-based service which sells primarily through our channel partners and has worked closely with them to support them in adapting to the ‘brave new world’ of the cloud, and the opportunities it presents. We have seen a revenue growth rate of at least 50% for the past 6 years, and could not have achieved this without a focused investment programme on our partner education, and a mutual desire with our partners to maximise the cloud opportunity.

From our perspective, there is no ignorance in the value of our channel, and vice versa. We run an award winning partner programme and are continually investing in partner training and education (including quarterly partner education days which are always completely over-subscribed) in order to help them become cloud ’consultants’, as opposed to ‘resellers’ and consequently achieve that ‘magical value-add’ which Tim refers to. Feedback from our partners would suggest we have been successful and the value we provide them has not gone unrecognised as they enjoy the benefits of a (protected) re-occurring revenue model.

Sure, there are still some partners closing the door to the opportunity as Tim says, but our experience would suggest that this opportunity is not being missed en masse. We are seeing everyday how our successful channel partners are making the shift from being a traditional reseller to becoming genuine consultants to their customers resulting in a win-win situation for all.

One VARs point of view...

Interesting article from Tim.

I think that a number of vendors have tried to circumnavigate the channel when introducing cloud offerings but as before when vendors have tried to cut out the channel it severely limits the number of potential customers it can touch and influence. A significant number of cloud vendors do seem to understand this. At Servium, we have found vendors willing to proactively engage with us and ensure that we are properly compensated for working with them on customer solutions. They provide strong sales, marketing, technical and operational support.

As will most things there is loads of hype around cloud, but if you look carefully you can find vendors who are actively engaging with re-sellers and are building strong long term cloud business with them. I think perhaps the vendors who are not might need to rethink their go to market strategy!

No-one "owns" a customers business, and those who think they do are clearly deluded, but resellers, in general, make it easier for the customer to navigate their way through the maze of solutions being offered. I believe that most customers understand this, along with a significant number of “switched on” vendors!