Marketing Must Be Prioritized, Digitized

Just a third of solution providers are started by people with a business background, Bibby said, and the vast majority of those founders are steeped in sales rather than marketing.

Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and direct marketing resellers (DMRs) marketing used to be focused largely around patch and release dates, Bibby said, but now that updates are occurring constantly in the cloud, a different strategy is needed.

Bibby urged partners to take advantage of vendor tools around web content syndication since creative marketing efforts can garner more than 100,000 views on YouTube.

"Talking about digital marketing will soon sound as silly as talking about color TV," Bibby said.