I just received confirmation that channel compensation for hosting under CenturyLink will no longer be residual. Savvis, which is owned by CenturyLink, took over management of the Qwest Cyber Centers.

At a time when cloud providers want agents selling, data center companies - Equinix/Switch&Data, InterNAP, now Savvis - has changed up the game on agents at a time when agents are trying to adjust to the whole cloud ecosystem. It just doesn't make sense.

From a purely CFO perspective, sure, that commission line item on the balance sheet keeps increasing because agents keep selling stuff and, by golly, they still want to get paid for it three or more years later. Really? Selfish b@stards. The CFO is scratching his head, thinking, "How do we reduce that number?"

The one thing that most sales organizations can tell you is that changing compensation plans can be disasterous. Salespeople loss trust in the organization. They stop selling your services - and start looking for ways to turf their clients to somewhere that WILL pay that.

Now I know that sounds like agents only care about the commissions, but that's not the case. Imagine going to a pro athlete and saying, "Hey, I know we said we would pay you $5 mill, but we changed our mind. You only get $3 mill." That's the exact same thing.

One reason it boggles my mind is that Savvis is still making bank on data center sales and can absorb the commissions in the price, since data center sales are not usually about price, but location and other factors.

Once again the Channel takes it in the chops. Thanks CenturyLink!