ARN and rhipe’s Roundtable attendees from (L): Luke Power (Intel Security), Dawn Edmonds (rhipe), David Nicol (Citrix), Jennifer O’Brien (ARN), David Gage (Microsoft), Allan Swann (ARN), Warren Nolan (Rhipe), Colin Garro (RedHat), Don Williams (Veeam), Carolyn Agombar (Rhipe), Geoffrey Nicholas (Enspire Australia), Sean Bishop (Harbour IT), John Donovan (VMware), Dan Wright (Regional IT)
DEMANDING CLIENTS
In a market that changes so rapidly, keeping on top of the latest trends is a key part of running a Cloud service provider based business. Nicholas said that his company spends around 20-25 per cent of its revenue in R&D.
“If I was just running a business to make a profit I could probably do with about four or five less resources than we have, but I’m going to stay at the forefront. And one of the benefits is that, typically, it took three to four months to bring a client in if I go back even five or six years ago, now we can actually bring a client in, in about three weeks,” he said.
The iPad and iPhone generation aren’t making it any easier for CSPs - not only are they demanding more, and quicker, the experience has to be seamless and the end product of a much higher quality. Cloud also means scaling and migration has to be easier. This means the trusted advisor has to be more on the ball, Donovan said.
RISK MANAGEMENT - ON-PREMISE OR OFF?
What is changing is the approach - Cloud’s former ‘all or nothing’ approach is unrealistic. By the same token, ‘going back’ is not an option. Most clients beyond SMBs have on-premise systems to match their offsite Cloud needs. ARN’s attendees all agreed that Hybrid is becoming the de facto standard.
“We’ve never seen so many lawyers involved in contracts as we have now as people shift to on premise environments. That’s not a bad thing because it means that they’re not being bedazzled by the technology, they think about commercial legalities and how solid the infrastructure actually is. On that basis I don’t think stuff will go backwards,” Donovan said.
“People will most likely lose some workloads in some environments because of poor planning, for example, but I think because everyone at this table represents the really large companies, they’re critically involved in how this stuff works, there’s a tremendous amount of experience.”
Intel security’s ANZ channel sales director, Luke Power, agrees - nobody is going back. All security discussions now involve Cloud in some aspect.
“Look at risk management, we have all different types of risk management companies that contact us every day around the type of solutions they can provide, and their security vulnerabilities. I can’t see it going backwards based on some of the conversations we have with those guys,” he said.
