N
ow in its fifth year of operation, the rise of First
Distribution’s Hosting Solutions division has
exponentially grown in conjunction with the rise
of cloud and hosted services such as Softwareas-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS),
all of which have become almost ubiquitous in the IT industry over the last few years.
First Distribution now serves some of the world’s biggest
and most prestigious vendors in this area – Citrix, CommVault, IBM, McAfee, Microsoft, Veeam, VMware and Zimbra all provide solutions which are sold by First Distribution.
Being associated with so many innovative vendors, in
addition to the fast pace of development within the cloud
industry, keeps the team on their toes regarding new hosting and cloud technologies, forcing them to regularly review
their skill and knowledge sets. With multiple licensing
agreements, models, rules and regulations for each vendor,
the devil, as they say, is in the details.
It’s not difficult to see why customers are enthusiastic
about cloud and hosted solutions, and accordingly why the
business division has experienced the growth which it has.
Low financial barrier to entry and flexible scalability are very
attractive benefits to cash-strapped businesses feeling the
pressure in a struggling economy.
From the distributor’s point of view, although the initial fees
associated with cloud are low and exclude the bulk capital
investment of traditional sales, shifting a customer from a
product to a service provides a lifetime income that will be
higher in the long run – provided that the distributor keeps
delivering good service.
In addition, customer retention can also be higher and
easier when you provide a service which the customer must
subscribe to - again provided that service levels are up
to scratch.
Kevin Derman oversees the Hosted Solutions business unit
of First Distribution, and is a well-known cloud expert and
commentator within the local industry. Indeed his Twitter
profile bio refers to ‘all things cloud’ whilst his feed constantly extols the merits of cloud and frequently contains words
like 3rd platform, mobility, big data and connectivity.
“With its low barrier to entry and flexible scalability (both
up and down), customers are drawn to the cloud, in turn
forcing the channel to provide solutions in that manner –
customer demand is driving the change as much as vendor
offerings. With customers preferring not to spend Y