I've been quite involved in the Microsoft CSP program including creating business plans for CSBexcelllence's clients to become a Microsoft CSP. A couple observations (maybe call them predictions) I made going back 2+ years ago,

1. A vast percentage of Indirect CSPs will first emerge outside of North America - that has been true to date. As I look at the latest map/list of Indirect CSPs, rough count I see approximately 11% are represented in North America - 89% outside North America. To be honest - no shocker to me at all - as a matter of fact just a few weeks ago I recently posted this blog -  "Are North America Channel Partners Going to Get into the Cloud?"

2. Many channel partners aka ITSPs (VARs, MSPs etc) will simply resist the cloud and many will just dabble in cloud - with few diving into the deep end of the cloud pool - I see this every day. The common theme here is the resisters and the dabblers are stuck between a rock and a hard place - they simply don't know how to "safely" transition into a recurring revenue cloud business. You might say "well they are already in the recurring revenue business as an MSP" - nope - a VERY small percentage of ITSPs are real MSPs doing real recurring revenue. And on top of that, when they say "well I'll add net-new cloud customers so as to not disrupt my current business" - getting these net new customers has them stymied in the new world of marketing and sales - they use the old world of getting new customers and it's simply not working. 

So what's a Microsoft Indirect CSP to do? I'm glad you asked,

They must treat partner enablement much differently than they are accustomed to - yes all the great sales tools are fine and dandy - but they must now start with partner "business" enablement before any of that great sales enablement will work.

What is business enablement? Again, thanks for asking.