Optus reveals how channel fits into carrier's cloud

Optus Business has opened up to CRN on the go-to-market strategy for its rapidly growing cloud ecosystem, which is currently a mainly direct model with sparse opportunities for resellers.

This week at the annual Optus Vision strategy update in Sydney, Optus Business managing director John Paitaridis said the carrier aimed to be an adviser, orchestrator and manager of customers’ cloud migrations. It has struck partnerships with Microsoft Azure, AWS, Cisco and will grow its relationships with VMware and IBM.

CRN asked where the indirect channel fits into this scheme, given that rival Telstra has been building an ICT channel to scale its own equivalent cloud services.

For now, Optus Business is taking cloud services to market itself, though Paitaridis didn’t rule out the possibility of growing via resellers in the future, as Optus does in other areas of its business.

“We’ll continue to assess the market opportunity,” he told CRN. “We’ve got indirect models for mobility and some of our other services. [We have] channels for our mobiles, we’ve got channels for some of our unified communication-type services, so this is probably a natural, extensible part of our channel strategy.

“But right now, primarily it’s a direct model to our customers and there’s significant amount of opportunity and work for us to handle there.”

Rather, Optus executives see partners working side-by-side with the carrier, providing professional services rather than reselling. On the flip side, Optus Business can also bring migration expertise, especially in the Microsoft space following the carrier's acquisition of award-winning partner Ensyst.

Microsoft has a “tonne” of partners that need to supply services through an enterprise-grade, orchestrated cloud platform, Paitaridis said. They provide software maintenance and licensing, while Optus might advise and manage on cloud migrations.

Optus vice president of product and ICT David Caspari – a veteran of a channel-led business model following more than a decade at HP, Cisco and Nortel – left the door open on the idea of taking cloud services to resellers.

“Do we have the capability to white label a set of cloud offerings and take them through the channel? Yes. We are maturing that model,” he said. “Do we have a very, very broad ecosystem of partners we work with in the context of our cloud strategy? Absolutely.”

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