There's an email that makes the rounds every six months or so about the "good old days" that annoys the heck out of me. It waxes nostalgic about kids playing outside until dark, drinking water from a garden hose, and going to movies for 10 cents. While it appeals to the minimalist in me (who wouldn't enjoy a simpler life?), it feels pointless. Kids today can't play outside until dark (too much homework), it's way more convenient to drink water out of a bottle, and watching five dollar movies on-demand is kind of cool.

Meanwhile, the technology super highway is similarly littered with debris from "what's next" promises. Remember when we used "dial-up;" when "eyeballs" were the way success was measured; and when every company's name began with an "e"? My personal favorite was the prediction that the Internet would eliminate the channel forever. (Didn't it just create new ones?) Now, we're faced with the lure of Twitter (who are those people following me?), all things "social," anything "as a Service" and the siren's call of the "Cloud." With our history of rapid obsolescence, it's no wonder that seasoned channel warriors are weary of jumping onto the next cumulous too quickly. Yet, to sit back and ponder too long is akin to, well, asking Mr. Wizard to make it stop.

While sticking your head in the Cloud haphazardly can cloud the head, as it were, there are time-tested axioms for qualifying the impact of the Cloud on your channel strategies and programs. And so, while it may sound pedantic, the question that keeps us (and hopefully you) grounded, and provides a nexus for decision-making, is: What business problem are we solving?

At the risk of over-simplifying the answer, nine times out of ten it boils down to fortifying profits through one of three levers:

• Growing revenue in new markets (broadening reach with existing or new solutions)
• Growing (or maintaining) revenue in existing markets (going deeper)
• Cutting costs through operational efficiencies