Recently I was in a conversation with a senior leader of a Public Cloud provider and we end-up having discussion on about impact of Cloud on different roles in enterprises and professional services giants. During the conversation while we agreed on most of the aspects of Cloud Economics, impact on business, changing partnership and co-opetition landscape before landing on contentious conversation on impact of Public Cloud (and expectations from) on Partner relationship / Channel partnership / alliance roles.
Cloud computing and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the IT and overall Business models across different verticals. In last 12 months Customers has stopped asking “Why Cloud?” and most of the enterprise leaders are asking about “How to adopt Cloud?”, “What’s the best approach to adopt Cloud”, “How to leverage Cloud and cloud powered Artificial Intelligence capabilities as unique differentiator in the Digital Transformation journey”.
This shift in Cloud Adoption curve, has accelerated the demand for Cloud professionals multi-fold and most of the existing factory model for training fresher’s and standard re-skilling programs are failing. Actually, Cloud computing is driving a change in the nature of most of the existing jobs as:
- Cloud is disruptive both in terms of speed of technical innovation and Cloud Economics enabled new business models
- Cloud requires growth mind-set and new learning mind-set instead of traditional “Hands on Lab” and learn everything about a product.
- Cloud requires different hiring and role fitment and interviewing skillset as traditional approach of “What you know? / “What you have done recently” is not important any more.
My 2 cents on key skillset for Cloud professionals and leaders are:
- How quickly you can un-learn things and how quickly you can learn new things in non-traditional manner?
- Ability to build and leverage network and communities to find the right SME instead of approach of becoming a SME on everything
- Agility and speed of responding to fast pace of Cloud
- Ability to constantly trying new things and strategy. What failed in past, might work now as Cloud is changing at fast speed and bringing new capabilities.
- Ability to succeed fast, fail faster and fix problems when they occur in fastest possible manner (without repeating the same mistake) … Not to mention analytical skill to identify patterns of failure and success
- Ability to challenge traditional approaches and de-risking new approaches
- Consume and re-use what exist today and align solution to Cloud roadmap. Define solution based on current requirements instead of best of breed approach.
- Experience with Agile solution development and ability to carve out Minimum Viable Product
- Apply On-demand and Cloud Economics to all aspects of role and solution
- Ability to apply business skillset to Technical solutions
- Ability to develop aggressive business plan to rotate business to Cloud
- Ability to ask right questions to SME in other area
As with Cloud and AI are becoming more pervasive, I see new partnership models with Solution provider and Public Cloud providers as key to success in market.
While in the past key skills of Partner relationship / Channel partnership / alliance roles were :
- Relationship development
- Executive Maturity and Presence
- Ability to navigate organization hierarchies and business stakeholders
- Ability to develop partner discounting , license re-selling / reselling margins
- Skillset to develop and manage solution Go-To-Market plan
- Creating joint marketing content and events
- Managing Partnership Satisfaction driven by relationship survey
- Arrive at joint account / customer list
With Cloud, How do you see the Partner relationship / Channel partnership / alliance roles changing? Are the traditional skillset still the most important skills or do you see need for additional skills and perspectives?
Which of the below you see as essential skill in new avatar of Partner relationship / Channel partnership / Alliance roles:
- Ability to co-develop new partnership models based on Cloud Economics and disruption of AI
- Growth mindset with deep knowledge of business impact due to disruption caused by Cloud and AI
- Ability to work with partners on co-developing business growth plan while Public Cloud providers and SaaS solutions are “Moving the Cheese”
- Be the advocate of partner to Sellers, Pre-sales, Engineering and Marketing roles
- Ability to go beyond joint account list, in terms of driving joint engagement at solution scenario level
- Strong relationship and network with Technical & Engineering teams
- Ability to sell to TDM and BDM stakeholders instead of “Let me come back” approach.
- Storytelling and Design Thinking experience
- L200+ skills to handle technical conversation in addition to business conversation
- Ability to align Cloud roadmaps with partnership models, Go-To-Market plans and business models (in addition to forward looking capability plan)
- “Learn It All” mind-set with ability to identify whitespace in existing offerings and solutions
- Ability to “feel comfortable while in un-comfortable zone”
- Ability to understand different levers in a Solution, as Cloud is shrinking the fat budgets on discounting and partner funding
- Ability to navigate challenges of slow speed of traditional business model rotation to new Cloud business (sometime intentional or un-intentional and sometime due to pressure of managing investors’ expectations)
- Understanding of Technical/Business trends with ability to co-relate them
- Go Drive attitude with-in limited resources and in ambiguous environments (drive real impact with strong execution plan for the partner strategy)
- Accountability to drive the Sales and Revenue (across co-sell and build-with models) across FY
- Ability to develop capability building plan at mass scale. …Co-develop capability plan to bring partner business aspect and impact of new Cloud and AI capabilities.
Looking forward to your views on changing skillset of Cloud professionals, Partner relationship / Channel partnership / Alliance roles, changes in hiring process and skill development / rotation.
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