With customers moving to the cloud, the challenges facing their channel providers are growing. In fact, over 40 percent of channel providers say the cloud is driving them in new directions, according to a recent survey by CompTIA, a nonprofit trade group. In the same survey, nearly as many channel providers also said their customers are demanding new services and IT delivery models.

For channel providers, meeting the changing demands of customers often requires changes to their own businesses. Yet many channel providers are themselves SMBs, meaning profit margins are thin, and capital for major business transformations is scarce.

One solution is partnerships. By partnering with large suppliers of cloud products and solutions, even small channel providers can deliver big solutions.

“Our partnership with Microsoft has really helped,” says Mike Aquino, director of cloud services at Cetan Corp., a Chesapeake, Virginia-based provider of cloud, collaboration and workload-automation solutions. “We’re really enthusiastic about moving to the cloud, and so is Microsoft. We’re nearly perfectly aligned.”

While cloud-based solutions offer simpler, less-costly alternatives for customers, moving them to the cloud can present challenges. Working with solutions that are essentially pre-configured can help. So can the technical expertise offered by a company with extensive resources and staff.

“Being a Microsoft partner recently helped us close a deal,” says Richard Cummins, president and CEO of ISOCNET, a provider of managed services, email, cloud hosting and design based in Crestview Hills, Kentucky. “One of our customers, a manufacturer, had special, unique opportunities in their migration to the cloud that we didn’t have a good handle on. So we got Microsoft engineers involved. They actually worked with the manufacturer’s IT staff to help resolve the issue and make the migration happen.”

By aligning with a major supplier, channel suppliers can also reassure customers on the still-touchy subjects of cloud security, privacy and uptime. “We’ve used Microsoft to help ease a client’s concerns about security,” Aquino says. “We show them Microsoft’s data centers, their reliability, their SLAs [service level agreements].”

Partnering also brings the marketing power that comes from associating yourself with a well-known top-tier brand. “Even though we’ve been around for 18 years, we’re not a national name,” says Cummins of ISOCNET. “If we go in with a Microsoft product, the customer is going to listen. It immediately gives us credibility to a bigger market.”

Channel providers can also benefit from partner sales and marketing programs. These typically include lead generation, email management, website content and more. Training is often offered, too, to help channel partners stay current on the latest products and services. Best of all, these partner programs are usually free.

Put it all together, and you’ve got the power of partnering.