Cloud Distribution issues warning to on-premise resellers

Distributor claims resellers ignoring cloud opportunity face bleak future as its revenues quadruple

VAD Cloud Distribution has held up a four-fold increase in its revenues this year as evidence that resellers must adapt to the cloud era or fall behind.

The Theale-based distributor, which focuses solely on cloud-based technology, claims its revenues for 2013 are tracking 300 per cent up on 2012, following a 400 per cent hike the previous year, although it would not disclose raw figures.

After starting off life in 2009, Cloud Distribution built a successful business around wireless LAN vendor Meraki but this year has signed a slew of cloud-centric vendors including Aerohive Networks, Exinda, Fiberlink Maas360, Lacoon Security, Lastline, Talon Storage and Watchful Software.

Business development director Adam Davison said Cloud's reseller partners were all evangelists "prepared to put effort into creating a brand in return for very high margins" and fired a warning shot at any resellers not embracing new as-a-service business models.

"Resellers understand the market is going through a shift and can't continue to just rely on selling tin and wraparound services," said Davison (pictured).

"They have to adapt to this cloud environment, which can mean just management in the cloud all the way through to offering 100-per-cent cloud-hosted. Hardware may still be in the mix, but if people aren't looking at technologies that leverage the cloud they will fall behind."

Cloud Distribution's vendor partners are grouped into four "solution stacks" covering LAN & wireless, WAN, enterprise mobility and security.

Davison indicated that Cloud would look add a fifth stack next year around advanced persistent threats and that the VAD is also looking to sign new vendors in the DDoS and web application security space.

Cloud's Altitude demand generation service has delivered over 250 opportunities to resellers in the last six month, Davison added.