The question from Faletra came after a 30-minute address in which Cagnazzi rallied solution providers to tackle the cloud services opportunity.

In fact, Cagnazzi told partners that they have the "foundational" elements to help CIOs cross the cloud chasm. "We have heard from every client that they just don't have the skills [to make the transition] and they are looking outside for folks like us to provide them," said Cagnazzi. "They know they have to digitally transform the infrastructure and modernize their applications. And they don't have the talent to stretch across all those technologies or they simply aren't deep enough to make the integration transition around digital transformation."

Customers are demanding vendor-agnostic partners that can look at the entire IT picture and "pull it all together," said Cagnazzi. "We become even more important to our OEM partners [with the transition to the cloud era]," he said.

Solution providers already have "foundational" skill sets such as networking, security, collaboration, data center, mobility and contact center, that can be adapted to the cloud era, said Cagnazzi. "Those are all foundational elements to building this digital future for our clients."

The key for solution providers is to start the transformation by focusing those tried-and-true skill sets on the megatrends hitting CIO customers: cloud, digital experience, mobility, Internet of Things and the constant proliferation of cyberattacks.

The transition to digital transformation and multicloud is going to mean an influx of new service provider partners to team with the channel, said Cagnazzi. It also requires a sales transition for the channel and manufacturer partners.

The new cloud services era dynamic changes the go to market for partners with vendors, said Cagnazzi. "Our investments in reconfiguring how we sell is an important piece of this puzzle as well," he added.

The changing cloud dynamics open the door for both large players scaling digital transformation and multicloud investments for many customers and niche skill sets around market segments and local markets, said Cagnazzi.

That said, there is an opportunity for large players that can provide the full breadth and depth of digital transformation services and skill sets, he said. That includes leadership in digital infrastructure in a secure, multicloud, highly scalable environment.

Cagnazzi stressed that the channel has experienced dramatic technology shifts before and made the transition.

"Our industry has seen these transitions before," he told the Tuesday afternoon gathering. "All you folks here have been very successful or else you wouldn't be here today. This is another one of those transitions, but with the added complexity that we have got to bring in IT service providers and types of OEMs that we have not dealt with in the past."