Magirus tells resellers: embrace cloud or die

Resellers who refuse to adjust their business model will come to a sticky end, warns distributor

Denise Bryant: Partners need to evolve businesses over next three-to-five years

Magirus has added its voice to the cloud computing debate by warning partners to start embracing the technology now or lose out in the future.

Speaking at the distributor’s Channel Connect 10 partner conference yesterday, UK managing director Denise Bryant told partners that if they do not get on the “cloud bandwagon” now they might not have a business in five years' time.

“If you carry on doing what you have always done, you are going to be getting what you have always got,” she said. “But the ‘got’ bit is going to get smaller and smaller.”

In a separate address to partners, Russ Fairman, EMEA alliance manager of VMware, said cloud was no longer an issue that VARs could write off as hype.

“Taxes and death are often said to be the only certainties in life, but I would say that cloud should be the latest addition to that list,” he said.

Bryant told delegates that over the next “three-to-five” years, they should be looking to evolve their operations into “cloud businesses” and transform themselves from “trusted solutions providers” into “trusted cloud providers.

Partners could start their journey, she added, by showing customers how to deploy public clouds, which would open up “consultancy revenue streams” to them.

“IT managers are being pressurised into using public clouds, but they know its going to be a nightmare,” she said. “And, before they migrate anything they will need a damn good business rationale to explain what they are moving to the cloud and why.”