Hosting Service Providers — Cloud Partners Or Competitors?

A lot of tech vendors — and channel partners — are struggling to define channel partner roles in the cloud services demand chain. On-premise technology variants are starting to lose traction in segments served mainly by channel partners, putting large numbers of channel partners — whose bread and butter is selling installations — at risk. In the software sector, that service provider is typically the software vendor. But not always — hosting service providers, or hosters, new types of partners dedicated to providing hosting services — now abound. And with advancements in hosting technology and hosters' business models, application hosters are a major threat to those vendors that cling to the old-school notion that channel partners are nothing more than resellers.