industry news
A LACK OF VENDOR SUPPORT
PREVENTS CHANNEL FROM
FULFILLING CLOUD AMBITIONS
Integrating new IT environments with
on-premise data centres and other deployments
is necessary for seamless IT operations
The gradual movement of data centres from on-premise services toward hosted
services such as colocation, managed hosting and cloud is an important shift in
enterprise IT infrastructure, compelling data centre service providers to expand
their portfolios to support hybrid environments. With enterprise IT infrastructure
currently being a combination of traditional and cloud services, providers need to
tailor their solutions to offer management and technical aid for a complex setup.
European Data Centre Services Market is the new analysis that is part of
the IT Services & Applications Growth Partnership Service program, which also
includes subjects such as enterprise infrastructure transformation, physical to
virtual back up software, managed security services, mobile device management,
software defined networking and cloud computing.
Different service providers are pursuing different strategies. For instance,
carrier neutral colocation providers will pursue interconnections as an important
business. Meanwhile, traditional hosting providers are incorporating cloud
capabilities of their own or by partnering with cloud service providers to enable
different enterprise IT environments through managed services.
‘Already, retail colocation providers are sealing partnerships with cloud
providers to meet enterprise demand for cloud interconnections,’ said digital
transformation research analyst Shuba Ramkumar. ‘Colocation providers
are building cloud ecosystems to allow enterprises to operate in hybrid IT
environments. There is increased focus on private networking models to deliver
seamless access and increase security of data centre services.’
Although Western Europe is the growth hub for colocation and managed
hosting in Europe, Eastern Europe is fast catching up with cloud and hosting
technology trends. The overall European market, driven by enterprise need to
outsource IT infrastructure management, is expected to grow from $5.65bn in
2015 to $10.13bn in 2020, at a compound annual growth rate of 12.3 per cent.
Vendors must do more to help the UK IT channel
overcome the barriers to selling cloud based services
if resellers are to fully capitalise on this opportunity
and satisfy end user demand. This is the key finding
from a major research project revealed today by the
Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) and Intermedia.
The research, conducted by Vanson Bourne
in Q2 2016 on behalf of CIF and Intermedia,
polled 150 senior decision makers from IT channel
organisations (MSPs, technical VARs and Systems
Integrators) regarding their attitudes and confidence
in reselling cloud services. Despite 99 per cent of
respondents recognising the potential benefits of
cloud, only 65 per cent are offering cloud based
services today.
A significant departure from more traditional IT
models, the vast majority of channel organisations
selling cloud services today have had to overcome
significant barriers in doing so. The survey identified
three common roadblocks:
2 per cent view cultural changes within the
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organisation to be a challenge,
81 per cent have experienced staff skills
shortages, and
80 per cent have come up against difficulties
surrounding their cloud marketing and
positioning.
Commenting on the findings, Alex Hilton,
CEO of the Cloud Industry Forum, said, ‘The
channel is clearly struggling when it comes to
cloud deployments and is missing out on major
opportunities as a result. We have seen end user
adoption of cloud based services rocket in recent
years, with 78 per cent of end user organisations
using at least one cloud based service today, up
from 61 per cent in 2012, but the channel hasn’t
been able to keep up with demand. Resellers that
do sell cloud services are reporting a wide range
of benefits, from improved competitive edge to
extended revenues and market reach. This puts
channel resellers that haven’t yet made the move at
a distinct disadvantage.’
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