JONATHAN HILL , Vice President Revenue , Linode LLC , is an American privately-owned cloud hosting company based in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , that provides virtual private servers . Hill , whose management philosophy is based on the idea of servant leadership , talks about his currently role and how the cloud hosting vendor founded in 2003 , is working with channel partners and developing its channel business in the EMEA and Asia-Pacific region .

Describe your current job role and the parts that are somewhat challenging ?

I work as Vice President , Revenue at Linode .

In practice , this means developing and supporting routes to market with our partners , as well as engaging with new companies that can use our cloud marketplace to reach our customers and helping our team deliver what customers want . We work globally with eleven locations spread across the US , Europe , India and the Asia-Pacific region , and we have more than one million customers that use our cloud services .

In terms of challenges , the biggest one is how to explain the concept of ‘ alternative cloud ’ – why should you look at a company other than the big hyper-scalers that offer everything ? That is also our biggest opportunity though – too many companies want an alternative to the big cloud providers , whether that is because they want better prices , better service or better relationships with their cloud provider . Once people understand that there is an alternative approach , people tend to get it straight away and can see how they apply that same methodology , whether this is as a customer or as a partner .

Can you explain how your company works with channel partners ?

We work with a variety of different companies around the market , from MSPs and service operators that use our cloud for their back-end services , to companies that are resellers for us , and through to agencies that design and build what their customers want and run it on Linode .

Each one of these groups needs a different approach , but the value proposition for them is similar – they want a personalised level of service that they just can ’ t get from the big cloud companies . Every customer and partner we work with gets that same quality of service from people in our office and they stay on each request until things are completed . That is essential to how our company has operated since it was first founded in 2003 , and it ’ s what differentiates us now .

How do you ensure channel partners flourish in a highly competitive market ?

I think service is a term that gets thrown around too much and taken for granted . The number of times that you see companies talk about valuing quality of service for customers and then you have to jump through a dozen automated hoops in order to speak to a person about your question . That is not putting investment into the right place .

We think there are huge opportunities for us and for our partners in serving customers that want simple , affordable and wellsupported cloud offerings . The majority of companies out there don ’ t need all the bells and whistles around cloud , and this is where there is an opportunity for us to work with partners around providing an alternative to the hyper-scalers . We want to work with our partners for the long term around how

Jonathan Hill , Vice President Revenue , Linode LLC

INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS Issue 43 63