Always be in front of the customer, rather than the customer being in front of you

Open source moves very quickly. A year ago only a small number of people had even heard of OpenStack. Today, customers are demanding it – but channel partners may not yet have the expertise necessary to successfully sell and deliver it.

As a channel partner, it’s important to understand that many customers will want to move just as quickly as the development cycles. As such, partners need to familiarize themselves with complex technologies that address distinct needs, all with different refresh and upgrade cycles. This could require hiring technology and business managers who are highly skilled in open source development. That’s a challenge, especially since the knowledge pool behind many of the most talked-about technologies is still relatively thin, but it’s important to get ahead of the curve to be the sound business partner the customers need.