Quality and Post-Sales Service Are Major Drivers for India SMB Cloud Customers

With cloud services showing increased demand among India small and medium businesses (SMBs, companies with up to 999 employees) there has been a healthy growth in the number of channel partners offering cloud solutions in their product/services portfolio. The total number of India SMB channel partners has increased by nearly 10% in the past year, while the number of cloud channel partners has increased by approximately 35%. This translates to a significant shift in the number of India partners offering cloud solutions.

While a typical India SMB-focused cloud channel partner has been in business for around 10 years, they have only added cloud offerings in the last 2-3. AMI’s recently released India Channel Partner study reveals that channel partners offering cloud solutions tend to be optimistic –expecting strong revenue growth driven by customer demand for hosted applications and vendor investments in this area. Quality of solutions and post-sales service are the major drivers to accelerate cloud adoption among SMB customers in India.

Remotely managed IT services (RMITS) is the most common cloud service offered, as it requires less investment for partners, followed by software-as-a-service (SaaS). Other cloud services include infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and cloud consulting services.

“There are three distinct forms of cloud solutions offered by channel partners in India,” noted Arnab Bhar, Analyst at AMI-India. “They are public, private and hybrid. Financial and professional business services are the top industries currently served by these partners and these businesses typically prefer a private solution as they are subject to strict regulations.”

“Many cloud channel partners have said that a major hindrance to the adoption of cloud-based solutions by India SMBs is the lack of understanding surrounding these applications and the inherent value they offer,” continued Mr. Bhar. In order to maintain a healthy growth rate in the number of partners offering cloud solutions, cloud vendors need to boost marketing initiatives and help partners educate India SMBs on cloud solutions’ value.

For a vendor to be successful in offering cloud services in India, it is necessary to meet the expectations of their partners. When surveyed, India cloud channel partners responded that access to 24/7 customer support, training of sales people, and lead generation/referrals are among the service and support features they require most from cloud vendors.

Related Study

AMI-Partners’ 2011-12 India Cloud Partner Transformation Report is a groundbreaking study that provides in-depth analysis and intelligence on today’s SMB Cloud Partner ecosystem, including competencies and best practices that enable partners to transform their cloud business.

Today, almost two thirds of all channel partners provide some type of cloud-based services to SMB customers. Yet only a small proportion of these partners have been successful in transforming into a cloud service provider. The study highlights the skill sets, competencies, investments, business model, sales & marketing tools, etc., that are required to successfully transform and migrate a partner to the cloud. It also segments and profiles partners by their success and value in providing various cloud services.

All types of cloud partners were surveyed for this study including cloud resellers, cloud application providers, cloud infrastructure providers, MSPs, cloud consultants, etc. Key issues addressed in the report include:

• Market opportunity and growth of all types of cloud partners
• Competencies and business Transformation practices employed by traditional partners to successfully migrate to the cloud partner
• Competitive analysis of top cloud vendors
• Key cloud solutions offered along with deal size, revenue and margins that partners derive
• Cloud marketing, sales and remuneration strategy of partners
• Mobility offerings

For more information about our studies, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, call 212-944-5100, e-mail ask_ami@ami-partners.com, or visit us at www.ami-partners.com.

About Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.

AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence—with a strong focus on global small and medium business (SMB) enterprises and extending into large enterprises and home-based businesses. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest quality data, business strategy perspectives and ―go-to-market solutions. Led by Andy Bose, the firm has built a world-class management team with deep experience cutting across IT, telecommunications and business services sectors in established and emerging markets.

AMI-Partners has helped shape the go-to-market SMB strategies of more than 150 leading IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services companies over the last ten years. The firm is well known for its IT and Internet adoption-based segmentation of the SMB markets, its annual retainership services based on global SMB tracking surveys in more than 25 countries, and its proprietary database of SMBs and SMB channel partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey-based information from several thousand SMBs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SMB trends and analysis.