Customers looking to move to the cloud often start by asking their channel suppliers to simply move one or more applications to the cloud. In other words, they view the cloud as a technology solution. Fair enough. But there’s a much better way to get customers started in the cloud: by asking them to describe the business problem they’re trying to solve, then determining whether the cloud is a good fit — and for which applications, systems and data sets.

Channel suppliers who focus on customers’ businesses, rather than their technologies, are speaking the language customers understand. After all, channel customers are not always technology experts; that’s why they’re coming to you.

By focusing on the business, channel suppliers can set customers’ expectations more realistically, an important factor for their satisfaction and retention. Mainly, customers need to grasp that cloud technology, while impressive, isn’t magic. “Many of our customers don’t have a good understanding,” says Richard Cummins, president and CEO of ISOCNET, a Crestview Hills, Ky.-based provider of managed services, email, cloud hosting and design. “They have a core business to take care of, and they just want somebody to take care of their IT needs.”

Of course, it isn’t that simple. So Cummins and his team will first review a customer’s business challenges. Only then do they show customers a business case for moving to the cloud. “We sit down with the clients and start talking,” he explains. “By the time we’re finished, they see a lot of benefits.”

Those benefits can be dramatic. Mike Aquino, director of cloud services at Cetan Corp., a Chesapeake, Va.-based provider of cloud, collaboration and workload-automation solutions, worked with a customer who had a serious business-technology problem. “They had an old VPN infrastructure and one central headquarters office that did all the computing work for the remote locations,” Aquino recounts. “The headquarters system went down every day. That would stop the entire operation.”

The solution? Aquino suggested moving all the customer’s prime applications to the cloud. That way, he explained, even if the customer’s headquarters suffered a technology outage, the remote operations could continue working. The customer agreed, and the work was done. “They’ve had great success,” Aquino reports. “They love it, actually.”

Finally, a business approach to the cloud can also change how channel partners think about themselves. Aquino says Cetan’s own primary mission is not technology, but instead, using technology to solve business challenges. “If you do that,” he adds, “customers will be satisfied.”