U.K. Channel Partners Strive For Their Place In The Cloud Ecosystem

As U.K. small and medium businesses increasingly look to take advantage of the benefits of the cloud services model, channel partners are moving quickly to respond to demand. According to an upcoming study by AMI-Partners, one in every six U.K. small and medium businesses (SMBs) focused partners are now offering hosted applications and 2 out of 3 offer remote ICT monitoring and management services.

A major driver has been the lowering of barriers to entry to service provision with the availability of remote management software platforms, hosted infrastructure and the expansion of SaaS applications for sale through the channel. This has enabled many smaller players to enter the market. The channel is exploring the most effective business models to allow it to play in this fast emerging market, from hosting their own applications and services to straight resale of 3rd party hosted offerings. AMI expects the SMB cloud space to be keenly fought for.

Comment from Hugh Gibbs, VP of Research for AMI in EMEA: Cloud services have huge implications for the traditional ICT reseller channel. New market entrants including Telcos and ISPs, retailers and IT vendors bring economies of scale which small partners do not have, and they will constitute a potent competitive threat. Smart channel partners have been successfully positioning themselves and differentiating their services with a blend of cloud services and on-premise support. The window of opportunity is a short one for channel partners to discover how they will evolve to a cloud-centric business model. The time for CPs to act is now.

Local channel partners (CPs) have traditionally been the trusted advisors of SMBs and herein lies the opportunity for them with the Cloud. SMBs need advice and support in understanding how to take advantage of the cloud and in migration of workloads and integration of cloud applications with legacy, on-premise systems.

AMI's 2010 U.K. Channel Partners Report will highlight these and other major trends in the context of the global IT marketplace.

Contact: http://www.ami-partners.com