OREANDA-NEWS. Deutsche Telekom plans to extend its "Easy-to-partner" program for the Telekom Business Marketplace launched at CeBIT 2012 to form a new multichannel cloud sales community. With this program, the Group is now ready to add next generation cloud solution providers to its Partner Eco-System and jointly target the growing business opportunity with SME's. The potential customers are small and medium businesses that are in need of a provider to source their professional business applications 'as a Service'. The Telekom Business Marketplace, offered, supported and extended by a partner they know and trust, is the ideal service for them.

Deutsche Telekom understands that the needs of its 2.8 million small and medium business customers have evolved to the point where their primary focus is on improving their own customer satisfaction. Many are no longer interested in the distraction of managing their own technology and have turned to the Telekom Business Marketplace to source their professional business applications 'as a Service'.

Other cloud providers have previously failed to create simple - yet innovative - partner relationships with specialist consulting firms that SMBs turn to for advice and help when adopting new technologies.

The program will focus on the principles of simplicity, community and benefits to jointly increase revenue and marketshare. It will be a collaboration between Deutsche Telekom and its next generation partners and will operate on a number of industry differentiating fundamentals such as a multichannel approach, revenue share at points of interest such as early adopter sales (first deals) and longevity of contract based on customer satisfaction.

"We are now looking for partners who see the cloud as an opportunity to capture new lines of business and win new customers," says Phil Zamani, Senior Vice President, Cloud Services at Deutsche Telekom AG. "Other cloud providers have previously created complex programs with difficult entry hurdles and requirements that have not helped these solution partners to find new business. Telekom's approach is to actually jointly design the programs with these partners and make them simple and enduing over time. This is unique in the cloud industry and something Deutsche Telekom cares about deeply."

During CeBIT Telekom will launch the first phase of this new program by having deep 1-on1 discussions with a select group of next generation cloud partners that will include system integrators, independent software vendors, resellers and cloud service providers. Telekom wants to engage and obtain feedback to its new approach and actually design the final program directly with these partners. Where clear benefits have been designed to support a core group of solution specialists as they expand their cloud-based businesses.

In the summer, Telekom will incorporate the jointly selected elements, investments and enablement activities and begin to operationalise the program and initiate partner sign-ups.

Business Marketplace is the single destination for SME's and where Telekom consolidates applications from the cloud aimed specifically at small and medium sized business customers. Since its launch in summer 2012, ca 40 applications have been added from 20 partners - including Box, an application for storing, sharing and collaborating online, iMeet, a virtual meeting room, and Office 365 a comprehensive suite of cloud applications from Microsoft. Deutsche Telekom is the contractual partner in Germany for all applications in the Business Marketplace. It guarantees end-to-end data privacy and data security in the cloud in accordance with Deutsche Telekom's strict standards. Telekom also provides local German-speaking service hotline for all applications as one stop-shop provider.