It’s not enough to have the right technology. Innovation will only get a company so far. What matter is adoption, how quickly customers take up a company’s offerings. Without adoption, a business is left waving their products at an empty room. For a Cloud technology company, one way to drive adoption is to work with partners, leveraging their networks to improve the business’s own.

To gain some understanding of this partner-driven strategy, John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, talked with Roger Quinlan, SVP of Global Strategic Services Partners at SAP SE, during the SAP Sapphire 2016 conference.

Slingshotting into the Cloud

The talk opened with a look at what the phrase “partner-managed Cloud” means. Quinlan explained it was a system that allowed partners to create Cloud offerings for their own clients. These Clouds would bring along SAP’s technology. The main reason for this strategy, Quinlan said, was to allow SAP into market niches they don’t serve today.

As for encouraging the adoption of SAP services, Quinlan said they’re really focusing on verticals and geographies so they don’t overlap markets or customers. This allows each partner to have a unique approach to their market, granting a competitive advantage.

A mutual ecosystem

The primary relationship, Quinlan said, is between partner and their end clients. The partner offers basic support, with SAP handling level 3 concerns. SAP also brings its ecosystem to the partners and clients. “We like to make this as easy as possible,” Quinlan said.

The partner benefits from a long-term relationship with their client. Given the power of the digital transformation, everyone wants to transform their business, Quinlan added. This becomes the digital core to build on. Companies can standardize on it, which then speeds their time to market.

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of SAP Sapphire 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE