AMI highlights future of Indian SMB Channel Revenues for Cloud offerings

According to AMI-Partners' soon-to-be released study on “Mapping of Cloud Vendor-Partner Engagement Model within India SMBs”, it has been revealed that Cloud-based services provides SMB partners (partners deriving 50% or more revenue from small and medium businesses with up to 999 employees) with opportunities to gradually transform their product-driven business model to a more service-oriented one. Keeping pace with the increased demand among India SMBs, there is a simultaneous strong growth in the number of partners moving to the Cloud, particularly within the SaaS and IaaS spaces.

When it comes to selling Cloud solutions, there are various innovative route-to-market models that are coined by young start-ups as well as the traditional global vendors. In today’s dynamic scenario, the cloud market is flooded with diversified offerings, starting from email solutions, website hosting services, and hosted productivity suites to advanced SaaS offerings like Business intelligence, CRM, ERP, project management and HR software.

Despite the hype surrounding cloud solution adoption, cloud-focused channel partners experienced moderate revenue growth over the last year. However, as SMBs are gradually becoming more comfortable with the concept of the cloud, partners are realizing the importance of developing a cloud value proposition to satisfy customer demands.

AMI has identified four major cloud business models: Cloud Resellers, Cloud Infrastructure Providers, Managed Service Providers and Cloud Application Developers. Cloud vendors need to do their part in helping partners boost cloud sales by coming up with newer marketing initiatives aimed at the different partner segments and assist the partners so that in turn, they can convince SMBs of the value of cloud solutions.