5 Things Cloud Service Providers Should Know About The Data Center Market

How important is it for cloud service providers to be channel-friendly?

It's interesting because you have data center companies that have shown no intention of being in the cloud business, but they are cloud-company friendly, and they want to establish the networks for the cloud service providers to be on their footprints. With a lot of these larger [data center operators]buying up data centers, you can tell just by their contract if they are channel-friendly or not. My biggest thing when I look at some of these cloud service providers is if they are agent partner, or channel-friendly.

Being channel friendly is paramount to the success of a cloud service provider. Many [of these providers] do not have sales teams and depend upon the [indirect] channel for their success. News travels fast across the channel, so there is no room for error among these companies. Things like lowering commissions or stopping commissions at renewal are huge mistakes and have crushed [cloud service provider] channels in the past.