Multichannel Sales Services for Enterprise Cloud Vendors.

For fast delivery and pay-as-you-go cost, corporations have begun to run application development and deployment projects on servers from cloud vendors. Value-add resellers (VARs) have even built dynamic, higher-level computing services using public cloud offerings as infrastructure. Amazon, as a cloud offerings pioneer deeply rooted in consumer web commerce, has led public cloud vendors in serving IT needs in a B2C direct fashion. This paper describes the overlooked importance of understanding enterprise buying practices and multichannel enterprise sales mechanisms. It is shown how existing sales services can be reused and modified to sell cloud computing resources in B2B direct and indirect ways. More important, the role of dealers/distributors, who manage their own customer relationships, is emphasized. To accommodate the various procurement systems being used by the different distributors, B2B gateway architecture for standard protocols and transactions is illustrated. This paper also suggests business models on how distributors can collaborate with a vendor in cloud resource planning by applying optimized inventory control.