Why the cloud is transforming the channel and redefining partnerships

The emergence of cloud has dramatically changed the game – businesses are now more agile to customer demand and can bring products to market faster. 

We’re also seeing the cloud drive the desire to improve employee productivity, while it is shifting global workforce trends towards remote and hybrid working. It’s no wonder that end-user spending on the cloud is forecasted to reach nearly $600 billion this year.

Celine Cazali

Celine Cazali has been Chief Partner Officer at SAP UK & Ireland since January 2022. She is responsible for managing strategic partnerships with SAP’s global system integrators, hyperscaler partners and SAP solution extension partners. 

Celine is focused on developing a strong and trusted ecosystem to drive profitable, sustainable business for both SAP UK & Ireland and its valued partners, delivering world-class customer outcomes.

In the channel, it is transforming partner solutions and reshaping the dynamic of the entire channel partner ecosystem, presenting new opportunities for partners to collaborate, innovate, and reach new customers within a shared cloud environment. 

Consequently, it is imperative that partners consider the benefits and do not miss out.

Embracing common, open standards

The cloud has emerged as a unifying force with regard to standardization of platforms, hardware, and solutions offered by channel partners. 

Unlike the fragmented and diverse nature that often characterizes on-premise solutions, cloud-based services can adhere to a set of open standards in hardware architecture and development. 

A commitment to uniformity with a shared cloud environment promotes easier integration across customers, managing of updates and performance, and even compatibility with other solutions. 

For channel partners, this translates into tangible benefits. It simplifies the integration of solutions into their portfolio and significantly reduces compatibility and patch management issues that can emerge from on-prem systems. 

This means channel partners can allocate more of their resources toward delivering value to their clients, rather than wrestling with the technical intricacies of integration. Shifting the focus in this way enables partners to provide more efficient and reliable services, ultimately leading to higher customer satisfaction.

Moreover, the adoption of open standards in the cloud means it’s easier to design and roll-out new solutions. 

Channel partners do not have to oversee time-consuming customer integrations, while thanks to the cloud’s scalability, they can react faster to client demands and better allocate resources. In turn, this alleviates valuable time and resources that can be redirected towards innovation and strategic planning.

Fostering specialization and collaboration in the cloud

Following a traditional sales model, channel partners resell solutions directly to their clients. However, under a shared business cloud, partners can adopt a new approach that sees solutions sold through other partners, creating a network that enables more specialized offerings. 

How does this work? The shared business cloud empowers partners with niche expertise in a particular industry or technology to develop cloud-based offerings, knowing that they can easily integrate and share these solutions with their peers. 

This collaborative approach not only extends the reach of specialized solutions but also enriches the entire ecosystem with knowledge sharing and co-innovation. 

It’s a win-win situation as partners can both deepen their expertise and broaden their market presence with a more in-depth portfolio of products and solutions. 

Some have voiced concerns that this approach could infringe upon intellectual property (IP) rights, something which partners are rightly protective over, but it is still entirely possible to maintain solution ownership. 

In shared clouds, partners can protect their IP with advanced access controls and encryption and at the same time, share proprietary solutions with other partners. In a collaborative world where marketplaces, platforms, and apps become more essential, and where multiple routes to market is a must, this model will help partners to future-proof their operations. 

Delivering a comprehensive service

Moving towards the cloud represents a pivotal transition for channel partners who are seeking to offer a more comprehensive service. With a shared industry cloud, partners can expand their offering without having to manage all the heavy lifting. 

For instance, partners can offer DevOps services with far less initial infrastructure investment, with the cloud taking care of performance and issue monitoring, and deploying updates where required.  

This real-time monitoring and engagement maintains exceptional service levels and allows partners to respond quickly to any issues that arise. It also provides a means to gather valuable insights from client usage data to facilitate ongoing improvement and customization of solutions.

In addition to the above, partners can capitalize on unique cloud benefits and incorporate them into the solutions they offer. As updates and maintenance are simpler, partners have enhanced control over the lifecycle of a solution. 

This makes it far easier to incorporate things like customer feedback into the solution design process, while providing a renewed focus on customer needs. 

The cloud-powered future of channel partnerships

The transition to the cloud represents a wealth of opportunities for the channel. It empowers partners to provide scalable, flexible, and low-maintenance solutions, offer deeper and more proactive support, and harness the collaborative environment to drive customer satisfaction. 

Through a shared industry cloud, channel partners are not just solution providers but strategic enablers of customer growth and innovation – a dimension to the role that will see them become long-term partners and drive success.