Julie Noizeux Inder, Fortinet South Africa

As cloud adoption continues to surge, traditional channel partners find themselves at a crossroads. What makes cloud such a challenge is that in the past, the channel was focused on selling, or reselling, hardware. Software started appearing on the scene and more recently, cloud.

“A lot of partners are stuck in that legacy mindset and are struggling to adapt to the cloud,” says Julie Noizeux Inder, channel manager at Fortinet South Africa. “For those entrenched in the hardware business, it’s been quite a struggle to adapt to selling what the big hyperscalers are offering.” Noizeux Inder has observed that newer companies – those that have developed their business alongside the cloud – are much more successful in the channel. It’s a simple equation: born-in-the-cloud customers are natural born-in-the-cloud resellers.