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Almost half of resellers in Europe have no current plans to offer cloud services.
The Context ChannelWatch survey of over 4,000 resellers found that less than one fifth (15 per cent) of resellers currently offer cloud services, with almost the same number of firms (14 per cent) planning on offering cloud products to their customers in the near future.
However, 42 per cent stated they had “no current plans” in the area. Context attributed the dearth of interest in cloud-based services to a lack of awareness among businesses, and advised distributors to develop education among partners.
“There is no doubting the serious commitment from resellers in engaging in the cloud,” explained Jeremy Davies, CEO and co-founder of Context.
“There is, however, still room for education."
“53 per cent of resellers said they weren’t getting the right kind of information from their value-added distributors – a clear sign to focus on communication and improve support activities to help resellers better address this market.”
To confirm the findings, Context asked resellers if they recognised a selection of existing cloud products from distributors, with more than half (57 per cent) of the firms saying they did not know of the products shown to them.
It seems that for those who are engaged with the cloud, however, passion for the products is high – of the resellers who recognised the products, 82 per cent said they would happily offer them to their customers in the future.
Elsewhere in the report, there was a message of renewed optimism from the channel for 2014. Almost half of resellers said they were expecting to perform better in 2014 compared to 2013. Only 17 per cent said they predict their performance to be worse than the previous year.
