Kevin, how should channel businesses embrace cloud
computing in order to enhance their operations?
With the number of vendors moving at least a portion (if not
the majority) of their business to the cloud, the change is inevitable. Not embracing it will make your business irrelevant
in a very short time. This technology offers more flexibility
in its routes to market than any other tech we have seen
to date. Here I am referring to Private Cloud, Public Cloud
and the Hybrid Cloud model. For the channel, the ability to
build a solution for their customers using any or all of these
solutions provides immense flexibility. At a basic level there
is a choice to make in moving your business into the cloud:
1.
Build your own
2.
How can resellers make money from cloud computing?
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 towards monthly opex payments. These can increase
or decrease as the business grows or downsizes. This has
direct implications for resellers who may have built their
business model on these large once-off 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.
Start reselling someone else’s cloud product
3.
Build a combination of your own solution and
utilise components of someone else’s cloud
solution
However, the quickest route to accelerate the adoption of
cloud in your IT business is to find a cloud provider that
allows you to resell their solution as your own, while you
maintain the customer relationship and ownership. This
way you provide your customer with the solutions they want
without having to invest in the implementation or ongoing
maintenance of the solution itself. You also don’t need the
highly expensive and rare expertise required to build your
own solution.
How is the rise of cloud computing forcing the channel
to change its strategies?
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 huge
upfront capital for IT solutions, the cloud is the perfect
solution.
Most of us clearly remember the days of receiving CDs
or DVDs with application code on them every time we
purchased software. Today, all software is downloadable
with most vendors not even able to supply DVDs with the
software. This change was rapid and forced the market to
adapt to the new distribution model. Cloud is no different.
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.
What are some of the offerings available to resellers?
There are multiple options and offerings available to resellers, including:
•
Vendor hosted solutions e.g. O365, McAfee
Security as a Service, Citrix Go To Meeting etc
•
Reselling local service providers’ hosted solutions
•
Building one’s own solution and datacentre, or
hosting your solution in someone else’s datacentre
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 $1 spent on
cloud services.
First Distribution will be hosting a series of workshops
aimed at helping resellers examine the financial aspects of
the cloud business model. We will include advice and training on sales and marketing in this exciting space as well.
How does one deal with the security issues inherent in
cloud?
I am always amused by the people who say, “I won’t use
cloud computing for my company, it’s not secure.” Then I
ask them if they do internet banking and wait for the penny
to drop.
Like any IT architecture, security in the cloud is of major
importance. A company would not install an internal network
without understanding all the aspects of security of the
installation. With a cloud solution, this is no different. The
company needs to i ??????????????????????????????????)???????)???????????????????????????????????????????)????????????????????????????????????????????)????????????????????????????????????????????)??????????????????????????$?????????????????????)???????????????????????????????????????????)???????????????((???????????????????????????((