Will cloud blow away the channel?

The argument goes that cloud computing will put resellers out of business as users access software hosted elsewhere, simply via their browser. We will no more need people to sell us software than we currently need bookshops on the high street thanks to the likes of Amazon.com - a company which coincidentally is now doing as much to push the enterprise cloud computing agenda as it did to spearhead the online retail boom.

Now that's not a message anybody in the channel ever wants to hear, let alone in trying economic times. But here's the thing. It’s a nonsense.

First of all, the obvious defence: as some people do still buy their books on the high street, so some people will resist the move to cloud computing. It simply won't be right for all businesses. I concede however, that point won't be enough to keep everybody in business as cloud is definitely the model of IT usage that is in the ascendency.
SaaS
However, the bleakest predictions are founded on one definition of cloud - that of the software-as-a-service vendors - and a belief that the only kind of software or services we'll soon ever need will be multi-tenant, on-demand and built on a common platform, minimising the management overhead to zero and creating this Utopian view of a seamless IT estate.

That's not happening in our lifetime. The reality is the channel can work with those vendors offering services in this space and hybrid solutions to become a major player in embedding cloud services into their customers’ business. They can also be the independent arbiter and trusted consultant on what flavour of cloud computing is right for those businesses.
Opportunity
The channel must earn its keep of course, and needs to evolve though in this industry we are too quick to deal in absolutes. We are always told the arrival of one model will bring about the death of another but it rarely does. How many businesses still run a mainframe, client server and, now, some form of cloud computing? The channel just needs to spot the opportunity and react.

And the top line opportunity as I see it looks like this: either through consolidation or by their own design reseller businesses will be moving into more of a services world, either white-labelling on-demand services, reselling packaged cloud services or taking the more costly route to running their own infrastructure and hardware. All of this will be done alongside the complementary side of their business, selling and supporting software used on-premise, where there isn't a more compelling managed or hosted offering.

Ultimately though they will be moving from box shifting to a hybrid, managed services model, becoming a conduit for the value-add cloud computing represents and piecing together the variety of applications available in the cloud with those still installed on-premise.