Claranet slams vendor cloud training

Firm brands classroom training insufficient to ensure resellers feel confident selling cloud services

Claranet has blasted IT vendors for not offering good enough cloud education and training to their channel partners.

The firm claims that VARs are being held back by insufficient classroom training from vendors, and warned that resellers could end up missing out without the right support.

According to the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF), a third of resellers expect cloud services to account for more than 20 per cent of their sales by 2015, up from 13 per cent last year. Despite this, 23 per cent of VARs said a lack of skills is holding them back.

The managed service provider remained tight-lipped on which vendors it believes offer poor training programmes, but its sales director Simon Bearne said resellers will struggle unless cloud providers up their game.

"The cloud remains a new and relatively unknown frontier for a large contingent within the channel and, while their concerns are by no means insurmountable, they will only be overcome with the help of vendors," he explained.

Bearne added that classroom-style training provided by vendors is not enough, and encouraged cloud providers to loan out their staff to help with initial sales and to ensure VARs know what they are doing.

He said: "Reselling the cloud is about more than simply providing a well-packaged product; expertise, support, and trust are just as important, and this is where CSPs must step in."