It would be easy for a channel partner to become so busy promoting, selling, installing and maintaining cloud-based systems, they wouldn’t have time to use the cloud themselves.

It would also be a big mistake.

There’s no better way to understand the many benefits of cloud technology than to try it yourself. There’s also no better way to set a good example for customers considering their own cloudward leaps.

Conversely, any channel partner who says they’re too busy for the cloud is missing out on valuable first-hand experience with the technology’s many powerful benefits. These channel partners could also find themselves having to deal with justifiably skeptical customers: “If the cloud’s as great as you say it is, then why aren’t you using it?”

Now, if your company was “born in the cloud,” this probably isn’t an issue. You’ve always run your business on cloud-based systems and services, and you always will. But companies like that are still pretty rare. Far more common are older organizations that either haven’t yet moved to the cloud or are doing so only gradually and in piecemeal fashion.

Richard Cummins was one of those. President and CEO of ISOCNET, a channel provider serving northern Kentucky and the greater Cincinnati area founded in 1996, he wasn’t always a big user of the cloud himself. But now, in part thanks to his company’s partnership with Microsoft, that’s changed. “In the past,” Cummins says, “there were things we said we’re going to keep, take care of ourselves, and not move to the cloud. But now we spend so much time selling the cloud to our customers, we wound up selling it to ourselves.”

Cloud benefits

Aside from the “practice what you preach” marketing implications, the cloud’s advantages for channel partners are pretty much all the same ones you’ve been telling your customers about. Namely, lower costs, a shift from capital expenditures to operating expenditures, greater agility, automatic upgrades, freedom from maintaining older systems, and more.

At the same time, your excuses are fading. Security — long the number one bugbear of cloud computing — is now quite advanced. In fact, some cloud suppliers argue that their data centers are actually more secure than those of the typical small and medium company.

What to move first? That will depend on your organization. But cloud-based storage, email and other office apps are often a good place to start. And if you need help, look around; partners can make just as big a difference for you as they do for your own clients.

So when it comes to the cloud, get smart, and practice what you preach.