Cloud technology may be well established, but there are still many businesses, especially SMEs, that still need to migrate over to it, and this is something resellers can play a core role in – and really should do.
While the pandemic markedly increased the uptake of cloud technologies by businesses, there are still plenty of small and medium-sized companies that have yet to take the plunge and still rely on things like physical servers.
There are many reasons for this – from not understanding the technology to worries over cost – but there are more compelling arguments for migrating, and this something that resellers need to emphasise to customers.
“Cloud is bigger than we can imagine,” says Ovi Gherghel, director cloud and cyber security, UK&I at Ingram Micro UK. “When speaking about cloud, we need to look forward and at the opportunities ahead of us. I’m not exaggerating when I say cloud is growing. Gartner, Inc. forecasts that in 2023, worldwide public cloud spending will grow 20.7% to total $591.8 billion, up from $490.3 billion in 2022.”
But there are still quite a few MSPs that haven’t embraced cloud too, Ovi adds. “Everyone is selling some sort of cloud today, but you can’t do it only through hardware. I think there is a lot of room for MSPs to build a cloud practice.”
However, Ovi notes that building a cloud practice isn’t straightforward. “There are loads of cloud providers and if as an MSP you want to do it right, you have to think about what the end customer wants to achieve,” he says. “The end customers are the ones driving demand in the market.”
This is where companies like Ingram Micro come in and can provide the support and expertise in the cloud that MSPs need. “When customers go to the MSP and ask about cloud, that is when the MSP comes to Ingram Micro,” Ovi says. “We want to support MSPs to retain their business and the best way to do that is to make their customers more dependent on the services and new products they can offer. The smart MSPs react fast, and we are there to support them in building that cloud practice and helping them to be proactive rather than reactive to customer demand.
“As an MSP, to start building a cloud practice you will need someone to support you along the way. If you want to move software from on-premises to the cloud, you must be aware that there are different options. We have all the expertise behind to support an MSP that wants to build a cloud practice and provide the right advice to the end customer on which platform to choose.
“The MSP also has to think about the kind of applications that can be run on those platforms, how do you do the lift and shift from on-premise to cloud? How do I secure that? This is what we do at Ingram Micro; we can hand-hold partners from pre-assessment to post-deployment.
“It is important to understand the services you can wraparound a cloud offering. The more software introduced to an end customer, the more managed services and professional services that can be sold into that customer.
“We work with hundreds of vendors to support our MSPs to make the right decision for their customer. In this multi-cloud world, there is no-one-size-fits all and that is where an MSP can bring real value to the end customer by offering a solution to the customer’s need rather than trying to sell a product and wraparound some services afterwards.”
Understanding business needs
But for MSPs to sell cloud services effectively to SME customers that have yet to migrate to the cloud, they need to understand the requirements of their business, says Raymond Ma, general manager of Europe, Australia & New Zealand, at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “SMEs that need to migrate their existing infrastructure to the cloud can start by developing a full understanding of their current and future business requirements. This includes their infrastructure, security and application environments,” he says. “Assessing their existing IT portfolio will help to determine what is best suited to a public cloud platform or SaaS alternatives.
“The assessment can start with the finance department. For example, building an enterprise resource planning system in the cloud can simplify business functions, better align teams across HR, production, customer relationship management and supply chain management. By optimising resources and integrating SAP instances, businesses can drive efficiency and maximise their profits.”
Emphasising benefits
These are benefits that resellers need to emphasise, as is the ability to scale usage of it. “In a way, cloud computing is like electricity,” says Raymond. “SMEs can consume the computing power in a highly scalable way, while benefitting from an ‘as-needed’ payment model. This gives SMEs the option of buying IT resources when they need to. This enables them to scale their computation resources effectively and efficiently should there be a spike in online visits or orders through the store due to unexpected reasons, such as a flash sale, an event or festival.”
Steve Holmes, PaperCut’s EMEA regional director and GM, adds that another selling point is its flexibility. “Like many enterprise-scale organisations, SMEs need access to their data in real-time and wherever their staff may be; especially in this era of hybrid working,” he says. “In addition to that access and flexibility, many SMEs will be looking to keep costs down and therefore will be interested in cloud solutions with no additional overheads for storage maintenance and no hardware maintenance. When you hear a customer say they’re looking to move away from servers and IT infrastructure, that’s your pitch opportunity.
“While each customer’s reasons for migrating services and apps to the cloud will differ according to the needs of their business, dealers should centre their discussions on the core benefits of data security, scalability and enhanced collaboration. They should also focus on the value of the automated software updates, optimised process efficiency and operational cost reductions.”
Steve adds that it is important for resellers to be part of a customer’s journey to using cloud technology and act as an adviser to them, as well as a retailer. “Many dealers pride themselves on their ability to add value, and the cloud migration project is a terrific opportunity to demonstrate how well they can do that,” he says.
“For most companies, moving to the cloud will be a daunting prospect because so much hinges on how smooth the process will be, and how effective the cloud will be once the migration is complete. Dealers need to be able to advise, inform, reassure, and address issues swiftly as they arise if customers are to feel comfortable about transitioning to the cloud.”
Trends
One of the current trends among customers, which is borne out of good practice, is to migrate the lowest-risk, lowest-value apps to the cloud first to assess the new infrastructure, Steve adds. “Once established, the most mission critical apps and services can be moved across. Customers are demanding ease of migration, with limited disruption to the business and the assurance of business continuity throughout the entire migration process.”
Raymond adds that with hybrid working now the norm, businesses of all sizes are moving more of their critical business infrastructure online and using hybrid cloud solutions. “This enables businesses, especially SMEs, to scale their workloads based on compliance, policy, and security requirements while replicating business-critical data to the cloud,” he says.
“We have seen more businesses across different industries – such as retail, financial, manufacturing, media and entertainment and gaming – adopt a hybrid cloud approach in order to enjoy the benefits of public and private cloud. Hybrid cloud deployments benefit from public cloud’s agility, elasticity, and cost-effectiveness without compromising the robust data security provided by the private cloud.”
Future
Raymond adds that demand is growing and will become core to many more businesses in the short- to medium-term. “As businesses migrated their critical businesses online during the pandemic, business decision makers worked closed with trusted cloud service providers to manage their online footprint in a cost-effective, resilient yet secure way,” he says. “Cloud computing and data-based intelligence services are in a pivotal position to capture such growing demand and future trends in the post-pandemic world.
“Looking forward, we believe we are just at the beginning of the cloud and digital intelligence era. By providing our technologies, solutions and domain expertise via the cloud to enable the digital transformation of different industries, more private and public sector organisations will embrace and adopt the cloud for their core businesses in the next 18 months.”
Steve adds that the migration to cloud services by SMEs will continue for the foreseeable future, but there will be a focus on certain aspects. “Businesses often respond to evolving economic circumstances by ensuring that their IT can support the business to give it the agility it needs to navigate change and challenges swiftly,” he says. “Given the current global uncertainties, we think in 2023 there will be a focus on cloud security, backup, and scalability.”
