Optimizing Cloud Services for Your Business: Key Insights and Best Practices
Insights from Richard Jones, Commercial Director at Tollring.
Evolving Demand for Cloud Products and Services
Bessemer Venture Partners have predicted that by the end of 2024, 80% of cloud 100 companies will be actively selling through cloud marketplaces. Demand for cloud products and services on marketplaces has grown over the last 12 months and Canalys expects global cloud marketplace purchasing to grow to over US$45 billion by 2025.
Some of the largest service providers are building their own cloud marketplaces due to this increased demand for easy online transactions. Microsoft has multiple marketplaces, enabling cloud products and services for Microsoft Teams, for example, to be purchased online either directly or via partners. Canalys forecasts that by 2025, 1/3 of marketplace procurement will be via channel partners on behalf of their customers.
Microsoft’s latest multi-party private offer for its marketplaces is driving growth for partners, enabling them to sell their offering via a channel partner, direct to an end customer online. Purchasing through marketplaces makes transactions easy, deployment quick, involves little admin and provides partners with the ability to leverage proven and secure solutions.
When the multi-party private offer extends to cater for multiple channels in the coming months, this will enable the channel to work with vendors to create a bundled marketplace solution that can be sold via their channel on the marketplace. This streamlining of procurement offers peace of mind through operational control and governance and accelerates time to value and innovation.
Benefits of Public, Private, and Hybrid Cloud
The choice of infrastructure and deployment depends on company policy, compliance and security policies, adherence to industry regulations (such as those in the financial services sector), quantity of customers, white labelling requirements and the size and complexity of customer requirements. If any of these are critical to an offering, private cloud is probably the most suitable option.
A public cloud or hybrid option is ideal for speed of deployment, cost efficiency, scalability, and ensuring access to the latest technologies with less admin and commitment.
Partner Assistance in Choosing the Right Cloud Solution
Understanding customer needs and budget are critical to helping with the decision. Partners should firstly understand their customer profile and vertical needs and look to find the best-in-class solutions that provide an integrated and comprehensive suite of services. This way partners can be at the heart of their customer’s business transformation journey. It is important to find cloud solutions that offer customers new and exciting tools that can revolutionise customer experience with clear ROI.
Main Stumbling Blocks in Cloud Implementation
While we are seeing a huge shift now to cloud delivered services across the unified communications space, partners must themselves invest in ensuring they offer a seamless and well supported service. Understanding areas of responsibility is very important when offering a cloud solution. While cloud services offer scale and reliability, they are often less customisable meaning partners may not have the flexibility they once enjoyed when implementing cloud solutions. Partners must understand their customer requirements clearly in order to make sure they have on-boarded the right cloud solutions. For example, a mid to large enterprise customer may require a private/hybrid cloud solution over a UCaaS multi tenanted solution in order to have the flexibility and control needed to meet compliance and operational requirements.
We are seeing more partners opt to roll out a marketplace solution, which reduces the workload that accompanies a cloud deployment, such as billing and provisioning set up. Marketplaces enable a lighter touch since a provider can opt to have a private or public cloud in the background and leverage the marketplace to undertake the transaction.
Ensuring End Users’ Data Security and Privacy
Data security and privacy must be at the forefront of any cloud solution. As part of the selection process, Partners should seek to understand from the outset how their customer’s data is stored and processed. Vendors must be able to provide a comprehensive data security and privacy programme that complies with stringent ISO standards for quality and information security. When it comes to stored data, such as call recordings, understanding clearly which country the data is resident in is also a very important consideration. Customers will demand that their data is encrypted to the highest cloud standards, is resident in their country of operation and is not used by or accessible to anyone other than themselves. Customers should have full control on granting access to information from within their organisation and will demand adherence to GDPR policies including the storage and removal of personal data.
Sources for statistics:
https://www.bvp.com/atlas/state-of-the-cloud-2022
https://canalys.com/newsroom/cloud-marketplace-forecast-2023
https://canalys.com/newsroom/cloud-marketplace-forecast-2023