How to Integrate Cloud Revenue Into Your Business

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When prospecting for cloud services customers, make sure to understand: • The type of information being stored, the performance requirements, and how the applications are being accessed? Is a public cloud (multi-tenant) sufficient or will hybrid or private environments be needed?
• Customer needs. For example, is customization required or can you use a more “out-of-the-box” approach?
• The types of SLAs required for customers to run their business and the ones that their customers require?
• The features that customers are looking to use now, and more importantly as they scale?

As a new breed of IT service provider, you must serve as the liaison between the providers of cloud services and the companies that need them, understanding the differences between a marketing or meaningful SLA. There are many providers that are happy to pay a credit and move on when issues arise. Many customers can accept this model, others cannot.

In this role, you need to understand the differences between offerings and ensure the client understands what he or she is paying for. If the client requires maximum uptime, then look to providers that offer enterprise clouds and SLAs that are meaningful, typically using the name brand providers (e.g., VMware, Cisco, EMC, and NetApp), resulting in a higher price tag due to measurable high-availability features and performance.

If the client has lower tiers of applications, higher risk tolerance, or a budget that will not support enterprise cloud, then look to open-source or smaller providers to meet this need. Criteria for this type of evaluation will include Key Performance Indicators tied to performance, scalability, quality, and cost.

Starting the Cloud Conversation
According to a 2011 Forrester Research survey of data center decision makers, about two-thirds of those surveyed said they “considered Disaster Recovery to be of high or critical importance in the decision to adopt cloud services.”

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)—or DR in the cloud—helps companies surmount the significant roadblocks to “do it yourself” implementation, including high CAPEX costs, limited personnel for adequate service management, and concerns about security.

Many companies don’t have comprehensive and tested disaster recovery plans; however, the need is both present and urgent in our “always on” era. The truth is that disaster recovery was just too expensive to justify for many companies due to the true cost to actually meet the recovery time and point objectives (RTO/RPO). Many check the box and fragmented solutions exist within client budgets today.

As a service provider, you have an opportunity to engage your customers in conversation about disaster recovery and business continuity, bringing these points to the forefront to help them solve a business challenge, as well as solidify your position as a trusted cloud advisor. You will often find that clients will open up more when discussing disaster recovery because they need the help in this area, and through these conversations, you’ll learn more about their business as a whole.

Businesses of all sizes today report an increased need for enhanced disaster recovery plans that offer swift and proven recovery when a disaster strikes. Another survey by the Aberdeen Group about IT Disaster Recovery trends compared cloud users and non-cloud users and revealed that mid-sized companies ($50 million to $1 billion of yearly revenue) were the largest group to adopt the cloud for data storage, accounting for 48 percent of the cloud users surveyed. Small companies followed at 38 percent and large companies at 26 percent.

To meet the demand for cost-effective, scalable DR solutions, technology providers are beginning to offer DRaaS solutions that combine the best of replication and cloud technologies, and offering a fully hosted and managed disaster recovery solution that:
• Fully manages cloud-based recovery service • Helps companies continue operations during disasters • Is a fraction of the cost of self-management • Speeds recovery time after disasters

A managed disaster recovery solution in the cloud can deliver protection that is better, cheaper, and faster than internal solutions. A DRaaS solution also reduces the burden of infrastructure tasks and expertise during the testing or real-world enactment of disaster recovery plans on businesses. With access to these types of solutions, paired with your solutions overlays, you can help foster better business continuity for your customers.

Channel Advantage
The question, “What is the role for the channel in the cloud?” has never been more relevant. As technology solutions providers, you have access to resources—people and technology—that can help lead customers through the cloud-adoption process. You will be successful in this new era as a cloud liaison if you align yourself early with technology partners with the strongest product sets and who can support you with seasoned bench strength along the way.

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