Cloud back-up is vital for reseller and MSP profitability: CloudBerry Lab
When it comes to picking out an increasingly important service, managed Cloud back-up is one that resellers look for and expect, according to Cloud back-up and Cloud storage management vendor, CloudBerry Lab.
In a March 2015 survey of 434 US-based IT resellers and MSPs, the company found that these resellers and MSPs can’t compete in the IT market without advanced Cloud back-up solutions.
It showed that 51 per cent of respondents said they could not compete, or that it would be very difficult for them to compete, without Cloud back-up solutions in their portfolios. Only 29 per cent indicated Cloud back-up accounted for a very small or insignificant percentage of revenues.
In addition, 79 per cent of respondents stated they expect the demand for managed Cloud back-up services to increase during the next 12 months.
CloudBerry Lab chief technology officer, Alexey Serkov, said the demand for Cloud back-up is escalating, and there are more options out there than ever before.
“When we were planning to conduct a reseller survey, we thought it would be interesting to know what, exactly, resellers look for and what they expect when it comes to an increasingly important service – managed Cloud back-up,” Serkov said.
“Clearly, resellers understand the distinction between full-featured, managed Cloud back-up solutions and solutions that do not offer much beyond the basic ability to store data in the Cloud.
“Many SMBs may not fully understand the major differences between the two, but resellers and MSPs serving them know exactly what’s required, and they demand backup solutions combining the best features, performance and flexibility while allowing them to grow their market share,” he said.
Other key findings include:
- Reliability was the most important factor when asked what resellers require from back-up solutions. Price was the following factor.
- Resellers and MSPs are more concerned with reliability of service, security and ease of file restore instead of price when selecting a Cloud for their customers’ data.
- The number of resellers who use managed Cloud back-up to sell higher margin services outnumbered those who sell cloud backup as a one-off service by a three-to-one margin.
“These findings demonstrate that resellers look beyond price and focus on some very specific requirements when it comes to selecting Cloud back-up solutions for their customers. This becomes even more interesting considering the current climate of falling prices for Cloud storage,” Serkov added.
