D2iQ, formerly known as Mesosphere, has launched a channel program to reward partners for driving adoption of an expanding portfolio of management tools for Kubernetes environments.
The tools provided by D2iQ are sold on a subscription model, which will enable partners to tap into a recurring revenue model at a time when many customers are rapidly embracing containers and microservices-based applications running on Kubernetes clusters.
Channel partners are already making significant investments in developing expertise with cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes because of that demand, says Joe Taborek, chief revenue officer at D2iQ. In fact, Taborek says a broad spectrum of cloud-native technology expertise already exists in the channel.
“The channel is already engaged,” says Taborek.
The challenge is demand for that cloud-native expertise is already running far ahead of the available supply of expertise, says Taborek. Channel partners that have not already begun to build a practice around cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes are likely to find themselves struggling to stay relevant in the months ahead, adds Taborek.
At the same time, however, Taborek cautions it’s still too early to drive meaningful revenue from a managed service because deployments of Kubernetes clusters in production environments have not reached enough critical mass. In effect, channel partners will need to strike a balance between where customers are on their cloud-native journey today versus where they might be a year from now.
As a rule, the degree to which any organizations have embraced cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes closely aligns with how much they value IT. Organizations that adopt leading edge platforms such as Kubernetes tend to invest heavily in building custom applications. Channel partners evaluating opportunities for cloud-native technologies would be well advised to determine how many of their customers are building and deploying modern applications based on, for example, best DevOps practices. It’s only a matter of time before most organizations embrace microservices and containers to build and deploy custom applications. However, the rate at which different organizations are moving down that path will vary widely.
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