With the increased demand in cloud services among small and medium businesses, there must be healthy growth in the number of channel partners offering cloud solutions as part of their product/services portfolio. The total number of India SMB channel partners has increased by nearly 10% in the past year, whereas the number of cloud channel partners has increased by approximately 35%. This translates to a significant shift in the number of India partners that are gravitating toward offering cloud solutions.

While a typical India SMB-focused cloud channel partner has been in business for around 10 years, they have only added cloud solution offerings in the last 2-3 years. AMI’s recently released India Channel Partner study reveals that channel partners offering cloud solutions tend to be optimistic – they are expecting strong revenue growth driven by customer demand for hosted applications and vendor investments in this area. Quality of solutions and post-sales service are the major drivers to accelerate cloud adoption among SMB customers in India.

“There are three distinct forms of cloud solutions offered by channel partners in India.  They are public, private and hybrid,” noted Arnab Bhar, Analyst at AMI-India. “Financial and professional business services are the top industries currently served by these partners and these businesses typically prefer a private solution as they are subject to strict regulations,” Bhar added.