Throughout the mass adoption of the internet in the late 90s companies expanded technology’s reach and accelerated sales like never before. As technology evolved into cloud environments and ‘born-in-the cloud companies’, the partnership channel evolved with it, expanding its definition. The modern-day partnership is really an umbrella centering around solutions and services. Partners can take many forms including resellers, integrators, MSP’s, influencers, and more.

In today’s complex solution and services-based environment, most companies are undergoing a major paradigm shift that puts partners right at the heart of their business model. The reason is that only a well-diversified ecosystem of loyal partners can fulfill the complex requirements of customers expanding beyond the IT department than any one company could manage on their own.

However, today Partner ecosystems are a major success factor. In some cases, it may even be the biggest one.

Making the case for a Partner-centric organization

As a result, there is no question that a strong and vibrant Partner ecosystem is needed for a company like OVHcloud to be successful in market. In order to achieve that, OVHcloud — and its partners — are jointly involved in all stages of the customer lifecycle. OVHcloud’s main objective is to help our customers bring their ideas to life. To do this, we offer them the freedom to build their most ambitious projects in a secure, compliant and sustainable cloud environment. OVHcloud wants its partners to play a primary role in achieving this objective, and it’s the partners who contribute to innovation development.

Innovation. Creativity. Transformation.

In becoming a partner-centric company, it’s imperative in embedding partnering into everything we do at OVHcloud. Further along to cultivate innovation, it is important to have a good network of thriving Partners. Shared innovation at OVHcloud reflects how much we value openness and transparency. Our core values are trust, which helps us build solutions together, passion, which inspires dedication, teamwork with our partners, disruption to innovate and think outside the box, and responsibility, since we always hold responsibility for our actions. The same applies to industry-specific solutions. In every single industry, we want to go partner led. We want to make sure that we complete our cloud approach with partners, because we realize that we cannot do everything on our own. And we really want to offer the best of breed for the customer. A partner network allows OVHcloud to help partners innovate and build on top of OVHcloud. OVHcloud brings expertise as a cloud provider, while its partners contribute their own expertise.

What does Partner-Centricity mean?

Partner-centricity is a journey that evolves over time based on mutual values with the partner ecosystem. Also, it’s all about building long-term partnerships. That’s what we will assess in the following.

As a Partner-centric organization we want to put partners and the partner experience first in almost everything we do. The focus is on developing strong and positive relationships within our partner ecosystem. That takes work and dedication, but it’s most certainly worth it. Partnerships in a partner-centric organization achieve an impact far greater than the sum of the individual parts.

So, what are the 3 key components we put in focus to build upon?

• Organizational Alignment
  • To foster a cross-functional, companywide partner-centric culture.
  • Aligning OVHcloud goals with those of the partner ecosystem.
  • Considering partners needs as equally important as our own.
• Sales & Technical Engagement
  • Identifying Partner complementary products and services to build innovative solutions.
  • Looking for creative ways to fill gaps in specific offerings to deliver on evolving customer needs to accelerate growth with leading-edge technologies and services.
  • Pipeline sharing to support Partner with technical and sales expertise.
• Partner Enablement
  • To train partners the same way as we do with our own employees, in equipping partners to better meet customer needs by investing in certifications and joint capabilities.
  • Open communication to create a great partner experience, sharing all critical information along the partner lifecycle.
  • Human relationships with Partners are at the front and center.

The Path to Partner Centricity

Let’s consider why we put the key components in focus to build a partner-centric program. The initial decision was obviously do we want to be Partner-centric, or just partner-focused? Building a partner-centric organization isn’t easy, and it takes time.

It’s an ongoing process and the aphorism clearly is

 The Path is the Goal

Mahatma Ghandi

Embarking the journey requires to be open for change and adjustments.

Is it worth it?

Yes.

In addition, it is clearly in line with OVHcloud’s company’s values. We had to consider as well whether our current partner ecosystem is ready to move along this route with us. The primary questions that came up were:

• How well do we understand our current partners?
• Do we have a good glimpse of the partner lifecycle from onboarding to maturity?
• Are we focusing primarily on the Partner’s competencies rather than Partner program levels to be able to solve the most pressing customers challenges?
• What are the partners we want to engage with in the future? Keep in mind to create a partner-centric culture, we need to get granular on the partners’ organizations.
• How to conduct ecosystem health checks: generating insights to better understand the existing partnerships and their current situation.
• What are the trends and opportunities in the ecosystem that promote collaboration? Are there any obstacles that may derail a partnership?

In conclusion partnerships are not static. As a Partner-centric organization we are constantly generating partner insights to identify opportunities for improvement and innovation. Like a natural ecosystem, a partnership ecosystem is constantly evolving. The partnership journey is a marathon and not a sprint to be able to drive sustainable growth.    

Never count on that the current state of an ecosystem as set in stone.

The benefits for clients to shift their applications and IT landscapes to the cloud are already well understood. It usually revolves around expected performance gains, scalability advantages of cloud-native products, boosted productivity, security and greatly reduced maintenance efforts for all assets leveraging cloud platform services. In summary the ultimate goal is shifting from a CAPEX model to OPEX for more IT infrastructure and technology agility and lowered system level maintenance.

But on the other hand cloud transformation projects require large investments, have extensive runtimes, and heavily bind both client internal teams and resources as well as advisors and migration teams coming from external consulting.

Because of the complexity, size and impact of a typical cloud transformation project, decision makers either in industry and or public sector are very careful about deciding for a cost effective cloud platform that meet their needs.

In order to build up that confidence, decision makers need to have a clear vision and insight on the market and approach migrating its estate over to their cloud platform of choice.

To succeed, cloud transformation projects need a clear vision

When an organization initiates a migration of their on-premise infrastructure to the cloud, the need to modernize their applications (or at least a subset of the applications) is generally clear. However, most organizations have a hard time picturing the future state of their IT infrastructure, once migrated to the cloud. 

And yet, migrating an application is much smoother when you already have a precise idea of what the final infrastructure will look like (for instance: which cloud services will be included, what will be the overall costs, etc.). 

Having this depth of knowledge is essential from a project management perspective. In order to accelerate the migration process, and to minimize risk, organizations need to share a clear vision of the end result. 

Moving to the cloud is also a time of uncertainty, especially for organizations that used to run all their applications and workloads on-premises. Thus, the success of your project will largely depend on the ability of managers to pave the way. “This is where we are at the moment”. “This is our destination”. “And here are different ways to get there”. Providing visibility on what the future infrastructure will look like is key to reduce fear and empower the teams to achieve the transformation process. 

A clear vision also comes with precise goals. What is the business case behind this application? There are many reasons to move to the cloud. Some organizations want to modernize their infrastructure from the ground up and are ready to spend several years on it. Others aim to stop running their hardware environment in the short term. Finally, for others, cost savings will be the decisive criterion. The optimal cloud architecture will largely depend on the organization’s goals and priorities. 

The hard time of comparing cloud offerings

Ideally, when planning the migration of an application, an organization should proceed as follows: 

• Define the goals of the migration
• Compare different migration alternatives
• Model the exact cloud architecture that is needed for this application

In practice, however, this can quickly become a labor intensive task, and one reason for that is the difficulty to compare the options available on the market. It’s no understatement that there is a wide range of cloud offerings, and that companies are spoilt for choice. But the main difficulty comes from the fact that each supplier has its own way of presenting its services and its pricing model. 

In the end, organizations miss a clear comparison table to efficiently investigate the pros and cons of each option, and make their migration decisions with speed and confidence. 

Cloud Insider: a knowledge base for multi-cloud market insights

To empower organizations on their transformation journey, Txture developed Cloud Insider, a solution that provides an unparalleled overview of the fast changing cloud market, and simplifies cloud services comparison and price forecasting. 

Cloud Insider knowledge base includes products from the vast majority of cloud vendors, and maintains up-to-date information about hundreds of products, and hundreds of thousands of available product variants. 

The goal of Cloud Insider is to provide cloud professionals with a comprehensive and provider-neutral overview of the cloud market. Leveraging Cloud Insider, you can quickly compare similar products based on several criteria (features, certifications, location, pricing model, etc.) and make your migration decisions much faster. 

How Cloud Insider works

In the following section, we’ll see how Cloud Insider can be used to quickly model cloud architecture alternatives. In this example, we’ll assume that your organization wants to migrate one of its workloads to OVHCloud. Your workload consists of a server, a database and a storage solution. 

1 – Modelling a cloud architecture

Browsing the knowledge base, you will be able to quickly find a server solution that fits your requirements. To narrow down your research, you can filter for specific results. For instance, you want the server to be located in the UK, and you also want the solution to be GDPR compliant.

You are presented with two different products of the OVHcloud catalog that fit the requirements. When you click on one product, you will see a list of product variants. You can again narrow down the list with additional filters, such as number of CPUs, operating system, instance type, storage type, etc.

You can proceed similarly to find a managed database and a storage solution. Once you have selected all the components you need, Cloud Insider generates an overview of the cloud architecture you just created. The platform also provides you with a bill of materials, so you get a clear idea of the overall costs of the architecture. 

For more and more organizations, sustainability has become a key criteria when choosing a cloud infrastructure. In the overview provided by Cloud Insider, you can also find insights into the carbon footprint of your current scenario. The platform automatically calculates the monthly energy consumption and CO2 emissions of your target architecture, as you can see below: 

2 – Comparing migration scenarios

Before making your migration decision, you probably want to consider a few alternatives. This is where the Cloud Insider platform can accelerate the comparison of different cloud architecture options. Once you created a first cloud architecture, you can build alternatives and test different product variants, locations, storage types, etc. 

Then, the platform will offer you a side-by side comparison. You will be able to quickly compare different cloud architectures based on pricing model, features, but also certifications and carbon footprint. In the end, you save time, and you can make your migration decisions based on up-to-date information. 

In this example, we compare different cloud architectures on OVHcloud, but you can also use it to compare architectures of different cloud vendors. 

The Bottom Line

We all know oftentimes it is hard to keep track of cloud services offered today and those added every month. How to compare services across providers, in which data center locations are services available, and what price tags do they have attached? Still as a cloud professional it is key to be confident with your decisions in order to pick the right solution from a pool of different options out there.

With Cloud Insider, browse cloud services by provider, location, certifications, and underlying technology. Rely on detailed analysis and up-to-date data of cloud products from various vendors to select the right services based on your requirements.

View cloud service product instances, certification details and compare to similar products of other providers. Easily filter instances by location, CPU, RAM, OS and compare on-demand vs. reserved instance prices.

With Cloud Insider cloud professionals finally can take out the uncertainty exploring the cloud market and can make educated decisions.

To learn more go to: https://cloudinsider.com

Deal Registration provides a structured way and plan for our partner ecosystem to register the deals they are working on. The partner can set a timeline, communicate key information, and track the progress as well as setting milestones so that there’s alignment and shared benefit between the two parties.

Here are some of the key benefits:

• A proactive way to become more aware in regards of the deals, to support and monitor overall partner activity for the highest level of effectiveness to close deals successfully,
• It is also a way to establish communication rhythm between our sales and technical teams and the partner – once a deal is registered, you call up to explore the deal and see if you can help in any way.
• Deal registration is important in continuing to build strong and trusted relationships with partners.

By registering a deal, it gives the partner clear ownership of the deal, eliminating any potential conflicts. This also allows partners to keep track of the status of their leads, as well as facilitating and stepping in to help partners close deals.

Anatomy of a Deal

In the deal registration process, it is imperative to understand what a deal exactly is.

A deal is not an opportunity in the first place. It is like a hidden initial sales stage in the opportunity management sales process. They act a lot like leads as they can be converted to opportunities. But a deal is not a lead either.

Deals act like a pre-stage from where opportunities can be created. Just like leads, they do not show up by default in any pipeline or forecast report until they have been converted to opportunities.

Let’s evaluate the differences between as Sales lead and the potential conversion into a Sales opportunity:

Sales Lead – is a contact or an account with limited information

• A sales lead is a set of contact information for a person or business, which could somehow facilitate a future sale.
• A lead should be defined as a qualified prospect who proactively wants to get more information. It can be a sales call, demo, a question, a white paper, something that proactively engages them in a conversation.
• A lead contains data points about the prospect to get qualified and scored further.

Sales Opportunity – is a contact or an account which has been qualified

• Converted from a lead provided from OVHcloud to a Partner
• Qualified from OVHcloud as an Opportunity and Registered
• The buyer has agreed to and is working on next steps on their end
• If you’ve converted a lead into an opportunity, it means there is an expected close date

Deal Reg Mechanics – Ease of doing business

Most deal registration processes are working very similar, simplification is key since partners usually work with a number of selected vendors. Typically, when a channel partner identifies a deal, the company completes OVHclouds deal registration form and submits it for approval. OVHcloud then evaluates the registration application along the defined guidelines. The turnaround time of evaluating and approving should not take mor than twenty-four hours, while in complex situations it may take forty-eight hours.

OVHcloud is using a defined sales process including six stages as illustrated below:

If the deal registration is approved, partners are granted a set period of time to close the sale, during which time OVHcloud other channel partners and internal sales team are not allowed to negotiate a similar deal with that lead. The length of time a partner is granted deal protection is usually 180 days and can be extended. During this time period OVHcloud may offer partners sales support assistance to move the sales cycle forward.

Recognizing Success

Partners will expect a reward for closing a deal, typically increased margins. However, compensation can vary based on program guidelines incl. eligible products. Guidelines also include reward conditions, the most common is to have a time frame on closing the deal and additional Rules of Engagement. Once the time frame expires and is not extended, the lead is up for grabs and any reward is forfeited.

Further along building trust is the most important value within a deal registration. Never to steal a lead from the partner as long as the deal is protected, clearly stated in the Rules of Engagement.

Final Thoughts – Bringing it all together

Time is our most valuable commodity. Wasting channel Partners time will put growing their business in peril. An effective deal registration program not only establish who you’ll be putting your resources behind, they can also augment partner time management very effectively.

Some simple steps we kept in mind setting up a deal registration process:

1. Make it easy for the partner – complex processes drive away interest in using the system.
2. Make it easy for the OVHcloud sales team – same principal applies. Don’t burden someone with endless work when a deal is registered or they start to get annoyed when one is registered, working against the system.
3. Follow up – don’t assume the partner knows what you know about your products.
4. Qualification – the death of deal registration occurs when your team starts to report registered deals as highly probably line items on a forecast, without any direct qualifications.

In summary the following strategies in defining and rolling out a deal registration system need to be applied for a successful collaboration with partners providing a seamless experience within the OVHcloud partner program.