Changing information technology (IT) use models linked to large-scale cloud services is changing IT reseller businesses and revenue models, with a significant shift towards services and value addition, says Westcon-Comstor Southern Africa cloud solutions director Leane Hannigan.

She notes that hardware renewal cycles, typi- cally when many resellers derive much of their business, are changing completely and sometimes disappearing entirely as mobile work and virtual machine platforms are increasingly being used. This requires that resellers take on the role of trusted partner and adviser to many clients.

“Service providers, vendors and channel partners must prove value to customers constantly – not only during update cycles. Significantly, this requires that these companies become more skills-orientated and focus on providing the expertise required by customers to implement and bed down many of the new systems and applications,” she says, adding that most have begun their transition.

Shifting towards expertise and service-orientated business models provides additional opportunities for channel partners, as bespoke cloud services that they have or that they develop can be resold through cloud partner network channels, provided they pass the usual vetting process, notes Hannigan.

Growing demand for advanced services, such as business intelligence, analytics, enterprise resource planning, predictive analytics and autonomic computing (computing that is aware of the context of the user and processes) will drive more companies to adopt the cloud and accelerate the shift towards knowledge-based work.

Westcon-Comstor is a global software firm Microsoft Tier 2 cloud solutions provider (CSP) partner in South Africa, and sells the firm’s Azure and Office 365 cloud products locally.

Its appointment as the local CSP partner enables its customers to have control over the end-to-end engagement of their clients’ cloud solutions and directly provision, bill and support cloud services.

Key to the success of solution provision is partners’ ability to provide services along with products. Additionally, local resellers will be able to use the Westcon-Comstor services team for their customer support.

“By allowing our partners to own the customer relationship, serve the complete customer life cycle and attach services, they are ideally positioned to help the end-user.”

The firm will also work directly with resellers to set the prices of product, negotiate the terms of procurement and bill customers locally, she concludes.