How To Avoid The Multi-Portal Cloud Services Pitfall

By Jason Bystrak, Executive Director, North America, Ingram Micro Cloud

While it’s often necessary for IT solution providers to take small steps when adding cloud services to their line card, thoughtful planning around cloud management goes a long way to protecting future profitability

When it comes to advice on where to begin selling cloud services, it’s common to hear experts recommend that resellers begin their journey by selecting a BDR (backup and disaster recovery) vendor and then, when they’re ready, to select another best-of-breed cloud provider to add the next cloud service (e.g., hosted Exchange). While I would concur that BDR is a good technology to sell first, there is one other step resellers should be taking beforehand that can better solidify their future cloud sales success.

To appreciate this advice, it’s important to first check out a key finding from CompTIA’s 5th Annual Trends in Cloud Computing report, which includes an analysis of the changes in cloud computing over the past five years. Despite such tremendous growth, several challenges remain for channel firms and end-users. Of all the cloud-related challenges channel companies face (e.g., price objections, security concerns), one of the biggest technical challenges is managing customers’ multi-cloud environments. CompTIA’s research revealed a four-part transition end users go through with the cloud, starting with an experimental phase where end users develop their proofs of concept. Next, they move to the noncritical use phase where they make a larger investment in the cloud, but keep their most sensitive data on premises. The third phase is full production, which includes moving business-critical IT systems to the cloud and the final phase is transformed IT where companies actually change the way they work to reap the full benefits of cloud computing.

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