TD SYNNEX has already helped hundreds of partners migrate to a cloud and subscription model while many more are still in the early stages of the transition. Here Simon Bennett, director, enterprise software and cloud, UK and Ireland, explains how TD SYNNEX can help them reach their destination successfully.
In moving towards a subscription model, the starting point for any reseller partner has to be an assessment of what you are trying to achieve as a business and how that aligns with your company strategy. This is always the first question we ask when we start talking to partners about their cloud and subscription plans – I see it as a key part of the value that we provide in helping them to accelerate their journey.
It’s important for us to understand where they are now, and where they want to get to. To know what percentage of their business today is classed as software licensing and / or licencing in a subscription model. We also need to understand how much of a focus they have and want to put on annuity-driven business and / or cloud consumption through hyperscalers, and whether they are looking at a true IaaS play or looking to build a new solution / managed service to take to market.
There is sometimes a need for key stakeholders to sit back and look in more depth
Sometimes we find that these lines between these areas are not clearly defined within the partner’s own organisation. Or that sales, technical, finance, marketing and operational business processes are not set-up to support a subscription business. There is sometimes a need for key stakeholders to sit back and look in more depth at the end-to-end operational requirements of running a subscription model.
Filling the gaps
With all that in mind, we use our Practice Builder methodology to make a full assessment (based on independent qualification and scoring criteria) of a partners’ current level of cloud maturity, so that we can drive the level of transformation they need. This massively shortens the process and ensures the right stakeholders are sponsoring the engagement between our companies.
It may be that they need our support from day one, or that they have technical skills gaps and need assistance in migrating to a different cloud platform. They may have the technical skills, but want to accelerate their time to market, or be looking for cost optimisation services. They may be ideally placed to join one of TD SYNNEX’s partner-to-partner initiatives, such as the one we run for Microsoft Dynamics 365, one of our partner ecosystems – we have a number of these for specific industries, or a TD SYNNEX partner community, such as TD SYNNEX Advance.
Partners can leverage TD SYNNEX’s Trusted Advisor methodology to do this and address other operational challenges
We can also work together to build a co-selling motion. This can be extremely valuable to the partner, as it’s sometimes quite a challenge for them to evaluate the true operational costs of a subscription / cloud business in isolation and without any experience. Partners can leverage TD SYNNEX’s Trusted Advisor methodology to do this and address other operational challenges.
Long-term investment
What’s critical to understand here is that TD SYNNEX has been investing for many years in building the methodologies, programmes, processes and tool that support partners in developing their cloud practices. Some providers focus most of their efforts on their aggregation platform – and while having an effective way to manage every stage of the process (TD SYNNEX has invested in building its StreamOne platform over many years), from provisioning through to monitoring and billing – is key, it is far from being the only requirement of a successful cloud business.
Our partners can access the right skills, support, services, and solutions at every stage of their development
This is why we have invested heavily in what we call our ‘4S methodology’. This takes us well beyond the platform, ensuring our partners can access the right skills, support, services, and solutions at every stage of their development.
Retaining renewals business
As well as supporting the development of their cloud and subscription business, it's important to support the partner in their core software base and not forget about their renewals business; to ensure they have the right technical competencies; can support all leading cloud platforms; that they can access the right partner network; that they can outsource where necessary; and to have access to the right data points and customer intelligence to drive the right marketing and sales campaigns.
TD SYNNEX’s ecosystems and communities enable them to reach out to other partners with different skills
TD SYNNEX’s Software Store and My Renewals Dashboard tools ensure they can maximise renewals. Our Centre of Excellence and local in-house technical teams provide the support partners need. We are the only distributor that can support them on all the top three public cloud platforms – AWS, Microsoft and Google. TD SYNNEX’s ecosystems and communities enable them to reach out to other partners with different skills. They can make use of our in-house market intelligence resources to shape their strategy and with our Click To Run cloud solutions, they can accelerate time to market and profitability.
Arriving safely
We have very successful and proven on-boarding and development journeys for AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. We will continue to support partners in developing their cloud practices and invest accordingly where they have a gap requiring scale, reach, or simply want support to accelerate their business by leveraging TD SYNNEX investments.
Partners see a much quicker acceleration of their cloud business
Where we partner well, we regularly see partners achieving double-digit YoY growth. Due to the investments that TD SYNNEX has made over the last few years in putting the right resources in place, partners see a much quicker acceleration of their cloud business.
