Partners who don’t adopt the cloud won’t survive

Thomas J. Bittman, VP Distinguished Analyst at Gartner, says that partners who don’t adopt the cloud won’t survive the changes ahead.

He says that after speaking to a variety of channel partners in the US, Canada and Europe two things became clear, "The channel will be critical in broader adoption of cloud computing (and private cloud), and the channel is not ready to do this.”

Bittman says the channel needs to be rebooted.

"Channel partners who don’t reboot and adjust to the new reality (that more and more IT capabilities purchased by the midmarket will be coming from the cloud, and not through hardware and software sales) won’t survive for long,” he wrote on a blog.

Bittman listed three opportunity areas for the channel with respect to cloud computing. They are basic education, helping an organisation change and managing the transformation.

"Is the channel ready for any of this? No way!” he says. "Are the provider and vendor business relationships with the channel making this easy? No way (vendors/providers are completely unclear whether they want to own the customer relationship or not)!

"Will the midmarket be able to adopt cloud computing in large scale without the channel? I don’t believe so. Cloud is simply too hard, too paradigm-shifting, too ‘cloudy’,” Bittman continued.

The post concluded by saying that those who don’t reboot for the cloud while others do will be left in "the dust clouds”.

You can read the full post here.