Moving Your
Business to
the Cloud
By Kevin Derman
Moving your business to the cloud needn’t be a headache. First for Cloud offers a simple
way to take advantage of the inherent profitability of the current market shift.
Over the past five years, IT companies from vendors and
VARs to distributors and even retailers, have been speaking
about migrating to the cloud.
The reality is if you are only strategising this element into
your business now, you may have already missed the boat.
IDC, a global market intelligence firm, calls this recent area
of phenomenal growth ‘The Third Platform’.
A company needs to take time to:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Understand the market
Understand the technology
Select the technology they are going to use
Implement the technology
Educate their team and customers around the
new offerings
This Third Platform encompasses not only cloud, but mobility, big data analytics, and social business as well. In fact,
IDC predicts that by 2020, 98% of all IT growth will come
from this area.
For most companies, the real inhibitor to either starting up
a cloud business or growing their current cloud business
is resources and building a compelling set of offerings. I
have heard numerous stories of resellers who try to start up
a cloud division, only to neglect their traditional business.
The reason for this is simply the amount of time, effort and
skill required to launch a set of cloud offerings.
30 | www.firstdistribution.co.za
3
revenue growth
As an IT reseller in Africa, you are in the right place at the
right time. This area is currently experiencing double digit
growth and is expected to continue along this trajectory.
35% of worldwide IT revenues are expected to come from
emerging markets over the next few years and cloud spend
is anticipated to grow at a sevenfold rate compared to a
threefold rate in non-emerging markets.
2
1
a
b
e
cd
time