A whole slew of solutions providers have cropped up to help companies make the sometimes daunting transition to an all-cloud infrastructure. In the tradition of good, old American capitalism, their sales pitches have consisted of loudly touting their own advantages and claiming themselves superior to the competition. One company has taken a different tack, claiming it takes a village to move to cloud.

Jeff Abbott, senior VP of Global Alliances and Channels, Telesales, Business Development, and Field Marketing at Infor, Inc., spoke about how the company leverages the company’s channel partners to win customers. He told Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and George Gilbert (@ggilbert41), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during Inforum 2016 that the company’s cloud business is growing, and he believes the partner ecosystem is largely responsible.

“Our channel partners are full-service partners — they do all of the selling, implementing and (a lot of them) long-term support of the customer,” Abbott said. “The value in a partner ecosystem overall is in extending the knowledge that a vendor provides and extending the capabilities that we provide.”

Too many cooks?

Some may legitimately feel they don’t want to navigate an entire ecosystem — that they would rather have a solution in as compact a package as possible. Does the channel partner network mob customers with too many choices, making it difficult to make a call? Abbott claimed it doesn’t, and despite the fact that customers do exercise a lot of personal choice in the ecosystem, Infor knows when to step in.

“When you walk in and you’re evaluating a new car, a lot of times six guys jump you at the same time,” Abbott said. “That’s not us. What we do is put a knowledgeable person in front of you that knows already the kind of car you might be interested in.”

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

Photo by SiliconANGLE