Cloud offers plenty for resellers

The days of resellers fearing cloud are over, according to Veeam Software technical director Charles Clarke, who says there are big opportunities to be had.

Clarke says cloud will continue to grow and become mainstream throughout 2013, as more players come up with enterprise level solutions resulting in partners making the move to capture enterprise level cloud business.

At the same time, he says, IT skills will move to a ‘cloud model’ as the industry becomes more specialised in this area. This in turn will create more opportunities for the channel in terms of partner specialisation, especially in areas of backup and disaster recovery as a service.

“The opportunity for cloud – and the channel – in New Zealand is massive,” Clarke says.

“Partner organisations shouldn’t be afraid of cloud. Rather than seeing it as competition, they should see it as something they can leverage to onsell to their own customer database.”

He says the rise of the data center in New Zealand is an enabler for delivery of cloud services and, while some customers will choose to go direct he believes the majority will seek specialist, niche partners to help them.

“Every [Veeam] partner is doing something around cloud strategies.

"They understand the opportunites for them in the cloud, whether it be setting up their own data center or renting white space in other data centers to provide services.”

Clarke says he was ‘surprised and delighted’ that 2012 brought a change in perception when it comes to cloud and what it means to organisations.

“It’s gone from being a monolitic, single provider thing to a mix of many, small niche providers doing things utilising cloud methodologies.”

The Channel Magazine