Morin: Partners Can Lead The Hybrid Cloud Conversation

Lief Morin
Lief Morin

Talk to enough solution providers, and a pattern emerges. The industry is trending toward an all-cloud, all off-premises model flush with opportunity for recurring revenue and the chance to focus on the long term.

Solution providers who have given up reselling hardware cold-turkey love the ballsy, swashbuckling image that comes along with taking that risk and emerging victorious.

But IT is not a one-size-fits-all industry, and every solution provider that drops everything to chase the cloud runs the risk of leaving behind customers that still need or want the old stuff.

Lief Morin, president of Key Information Systems, says solution providers have an opportunity to lead conversations around the adoption of hybrid models. It may not be as sexy as the all-cloud-all-the-time talk currently dominating the industry, but in business, value never goes out of style.

Solution providers have a great opportunity to realize "the value of a blended environment," Morin said. It's unreasonable to think that all customers, or all solution providers will gravitate toward a single strategy.

"There's not one strategy that will fit every solution provider," he said. "Some will be cloud-only, some will be the best of both. Some are still on-prem only. They are all valuable models."

Solution providers that are able to articulate the advantages of, and expertise with, blended environments have a chance to quell confusion and win business in a market that's changing more quickly than industry veterans like Morin have ever seen.

Still, that's not an easy task, Morin said. He personally visits about 100 customers every year to get a read on both their technology needs and their business needs. The resale business is still a significant part of California-based Key Info's book, but cloud is the fastest growing.

"It's all about using the correct solution for the particular problem to be solved," he said, "That's what partners do. That's why the channel exists."