What to Consider in Seeking a Cloud Provider Partner

When organizations move their businesses communications like Exchange, SharePoint, email, and collaboration to the cloud, they want to know that they will be able to access the tools and applications easily and reliably. That’s true whether the organizations in question are multinational giants, good-sized enterprise businesses, or small or medium outfits. The good news is that the cloud now makes it possible for small and medium-sized businesses to enjoy many of the tools that in the past were only affordable for much larger entities.

That’s great news for small and medium businesses. But where does it leave managed service providers and the various sales channel organizations that sell into the SMB space?

Well, they can build their own cloud businesses from scratch. But that takes time, money, and a fair amount of expertise.

Another path is for MSPs and other solutions providers to offer cloud services via partnership. But choosing from the wide array of cloud partner programs can be tough, as there are hundreds of them out there.

In a recent blog, Mathieu Leblanc lays out a few tips on what to look for and what to avoid in shopping for a cloud partner. SherWeb’s director of strategic partners and business development suggests MSPs and others look at what kind of hardware different cloud providers use, whether they have certified experts on staff, their redundancy strategies, technical support, reseller support, partner remuneration, and policy related to migration fees.

To read that blog, check it out here. You may also want to consider joining us for the upcoming webinar “New for the Small Business: Highly Available, Affordable Cloud Databases” Dec. 1 at 2 p.m. Eastern. The event is sponsored by SherWeb, a company on which more than 25,000 businesses and 4,000 partners in more than 100 countries rely for cloud services such as cloud databases, hosted Exchange, Office 365, and more. To register, click here.