Steering
the Ship
First Distribution’s General Manager for
Cloud and Hosting, Kevin Derman is
currently heading up the First for Cloud
brokerage.
Kevin is a well-known and highly respected player in the local cloud industry, having previously headed up the
partner business for Microsoft South
Africa as well as IBM Sub-Saharan Africa.
He also co-founded Infointeg (now
IntelliCred), an internet start-up, and is a
motivational and business speaker.
Kevin gives us his thoughts on First for
Cloud below...
“First Distribution wanted to find a way to enable its
traditional and current resellers to resell cloud services to
existing end-users as their demand grew, in a simple way.
They wanted to make it easy for resellers to get the World’s
Best Cloud Services and onsell them without the hassles
associated with having to negotiate and organise their own
set of services. In short, First Distribution wanted to provide
a pre-packaged solution which was quick to setup, easy to
install and simple to understand. Thus First for Cloud was
born – an online partner branded platform which enables
resellers to sell cloud services to their end-users.
First for Cloud is a centralised point at which cloud service
providers and resellers can meet to transact and exchange
services. It allows a reseller complete control and end-user visibility to all their cloud services for resale, and each
reseller has the ability to allow their end-users access to the
services which they want to resell. The end-user can then
buy services directly from the reseller without being aware
that the distributor ultimately exists.
Having conducted many business model transformation
workshops, I have witnessed many traditional resellers
grappling with the concept of how to migrate their business
to a cloud model. The issue always seems to be one of
time, resources and funding in order to make this migration
successful. First for Cloud also adds value to the reseller
experience by allowing them to focus on the core business
14 | www.firstdistribution.co.za
of selling their products and services, whilst not being distracted by time-consuming administrative duties like setting
up systems. The completeness and integration of the brokerage also saves the reseller time, as does the simplified
cloud services billing.
I believe that the migration to cloud and the accompanying
business models based on this, are the way of the future.
I’m really anticipating the success of this venture and can’t
wait to see its future impact on the industry revealed.”
“Cloud Service Brokerages are an important link in the value chain. They remove
the complexity of doing business for the
Value Added Reseller while offering a host
of cloud solutions from different vendors
available in one place for the resellers and
their customers.”
Contact
For any First for Cloud related queries, please contact
Kevin Derman on (011) 540 2640 or email him at kevin.
[email protected].