Distribution will continue to play a critical role in a cloud market delivering services and support to resellers on behalf of vendors, according to IBM.
Big Blue took the wraps off its SmartCloud service this week with an ecosystem to run alongside to support resellers and developers but used the launch as an opportunity to underline its belief in distribution.
Some market watchers had raised doubts about the long-term role of distribution in a market where applications and services are available through the web.
But Michael Heegaard, North East Europe business partner cloud director at IBM, said that distribution would continue to have a major role to play.
"We fundamentally need distribution partners to do the same as they ever have done," he said.
"They help enablement, physical delivery and integration of different offerings for partners and the only thing they will not need to do is the physical delivery but there will be other things they start doing," he added.
Some of the additional services distribution is expected to add to the mix include taking billing to a more sophisticated level for partners wanting to charge for applications on a pay-as-you-use basis.
Steve Groom, CEO of IBM partner Vissensa, said that distribution continued to be vital because it meant it didn't have to rely on the vendor because distie partners had that relationship with Big Blue and could add value to resellers.
"They help enablement, physical delivery and integration of different offerings for partners and the only thing they will not need to do is the physical delivery but there will be other things they start doing," he added.
Some of the additional services distribution is expected to add to the mix include taking billing to a more sophisticated level for partners wanting to charge for applications on a pay-as-you-use basis.
Steve Groom, CEO of IBM partner Vissensa, said that distribution continued to be vital because it meant it didn't have to rely on the vendor because distie partners had that relationship with Big Blue and could add value to resellers.
As a next generation distributor, we made the decision early to adopt the role of aggregator and develop our own cloud-based and managed services based around best of breed technologies.
Because we are able to draw on our experience of integrating diverse vendor offerings into a series of cloud solutions, it means our channel partners don't have to.
For resellers who want a low risk, fast-track into the cloud, this is where distribution has a real role to play. More details can be found at www.alvea-services.com/
I have to say it very reassuring to see IBM thinking about distributors for selling their cloud offering.Cleary IBM are looking to get access to the large numbers of potential resellers a distributor currently has access to. However I think IBM may not have thought about the cost of running a distribution company. Add the fact that cloud services are all about reducing immensly the cost of IT to the end user, the margins potentially available to a VAD at a monetary level from cloud services are significantly reduced. VADs wil need to change or adopt their current business models to respond to this requirement to be able to make a profit. However, the change required is not so easy. There are many factors that need to change, that can have a significant chance of tanking a VADs share price.
I am not sure this message shows the complete picture. We need to see how IBM have thought through the transformation require by a VAD to service this. Hat's off to IBM for looking at a distributor stratgey. Mickey
Headlines like this keep appearing which I guess is a signal things are likely to change. It'll be distribution Jim, but not as we know it..!