Before we know it, cloud will be as ubiquitous as any other
computing model. It will just be expected that a company
offers a cloud solution”
That may be so, but in terms of channel business, how are
resellers expected to make money with the accompanying
shift in business model?
Kevin states that “one important aspect to note is that the
financial model of cloud is different to the traditional model.
The shift is away from large once- off capital expenditure
payments and the move is towards monthly opex payments.
These can increase or decrease as the business grows or
down sizes. This has direct implications for resellers who
may have built their business model on these large onceoff payments. With the cloud model, the upside is that over
a period of time a reseller can build a great base of predictable annuity revenue. In addition to this they can continue
to upsell and enhance the cloud offering provided by customisation and/or adding additional cloud products.”
As with most things in life, cloud and hosted solutions do
have their risks, concerns and downsides. One of these
is potential downtime and service outages. Naturally, all
cloud solutions differ with regards to uptime SLAs (Service
Level Agreements). Microsoft for example offers a financially-backed 99.9% uptime guarantee for their Office 365
product. What this does not take into account is any potential problems from the connectivity on the user’s side. It is
still possible to cater for this however, by having redundant
connectivity to the business.
Security is another concern which often lurks at the back of
the minds of both users and providers. Kevin however, has
his own opinion on the matter. “I am always amused by the
people who say, “I won’t use cloud computing for my company, it’s not secure.” Then I ask them if they do internet
banking and wait for the penny to drop.”
“Like any IT architecture, security in the cloud is of major
importance. A company would not install an internal network
without understanding all the aspects of
security of the installation. With a cloud
solution, this is no different. The company
needs to inspect all the aspects of the
service in question.”
Kevin also has some helpful advice when
it comes to cloud implementation.
“Forrester has released a list of questions
that enterprises should ask to secure their
cloud implementation, covering the areas
of security and privacy, compliance, and
other legal and contractual issues. I would
recommend resellers understand these
and are able to answer these questions
for their customers” he says.
It’s clear that cloud is not going away anytime soon. In fact, it’s rapidly become the
new normal. No wonder then, that First
Distribution’s Hosted Solutions division
has become such an integral part of the
company’s business.
Kevin has the last word.
“Most resellers fear that the valuable services they provide
their customers with will no longer be required in the cloud
model. This is not the case - companies continue to require
these services for their cloud solutions, most times in the
ratio of around $7 of services revenue for each $1 spent on
cloud services. So the opportunities are definitely still there
for distributors and resellers willing to invest in new technologies” he adds.
14 | www.firstdistribution.co.za
“I believe that cloud computing will be the
predominant IT methodology within the
next three years” he says. “Because of
this, the term cloud computing will probably disappear from daily IT discussions. Cloud architecture
will just be the way we consume IT services, and companies will no longer have these huge concerns as to where
the programme or information sits. As cloud computing
moves from mystery to mainstream, cloud will just become
the pervasive computing mode in the same way that wireless has become the pervasive connectivity mode. This is
an exciting time and resellers who embrace this change will
be able to capitalise on this technology wave.”