Higher Margins

Reselling cloud services from a large player like Amazon Web Services, Google or Microsoft translates to low profit margins for channel partners because they are selling commodity Infrastructure-as-a-Service that is consistently dropping in price, the executives said. However, selling cloud from a cloud service provider with value-added services wrapped around the offering is where the value -- and more margin -- lies for channel partners, they said.

"We’ll never be just a pure reseller. There’s not enough margin. There’s not enough value to it, but that in conjunction with the other services is good for our channel partners, and good for the customer," TierPoint's Stewart (pictured) said.