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COVER STORY
24
Empower your business
to succeed in the cloud
era with Microsoft Azure
Author: Apay Obang-Oyway, Director of Cloud & Software, UK & Ireland, Ingram Micro
In a nutshell – how Ingram Micro Cloud can help
Ingram Micro Cloud’s channel-only model is designed to support you throughout the sales cycle, offering customisable marketing
and demand generation programmes, an ever-growing portfolio of cloud services. This is augmented by our technology delivery team
for expert pre-sales support and complementary white-labelled professional and managed service offerings, enabling you to build a
differentiated solution and deliver real value to your customers.
the channel needs to shift its view of
fulfilling infrastructure requirements
via transactional methodology, towards
providing professional services that enable
high value business outcomes quickly
and efficiently. Far from becoming a threat
to channel players, Infrastructure-as-a-
Service has instead given the community
an enhanced role in their customers and
certainly, the opportunity considerably
outweighs the risk.
To achieve this, resellers should
focus on growing capability, capacity
and scalability, and on unlocking the
value of your business and your people’s
experience and expertise to deliver greater
value to a much wider audience base.
Increasingly, the conversation is more
about how businesses can benefit from
advanced workloads powered by the cloud
in terms of agility, innovation, customer
service and competitiveness in their
market.
No matter where you are in your
cloud journey, the mantra for the channel
is now to remove the complexity and
uncertainty of digital transformation for
your customers, and to add expertise
and value-added consultancy. And while
for traditional resellers there may be
some transformation required, the new
model offers far greater rewards and
opportunities for growth than sticking with
the incumbent model. For experienced
CSPs, wrapping around valuable expanded
services and helping your customers to
make the move to an increasingly cloud-
based IT estate will elevate your business
to trusted advisor in the cloud.
Azure for traditional and born-in-the-
cloud partners
Even if your reseller business is at the very
beginning of becoming a CSP, or even one
that has a decade’s experience under its
belt, the emergence of Microsoft Azure has
broken down several barriers to adoption
like no other before it.
The Microsoft Azure cloud platform
enables resellers to deliver applications
and services to your customers with a
secure, lower risk and familiar environment.
The specialised operating system eases
the transition to cloud by supporting a
hybrid approach; resellers can develop,
manage and deploy their cloud services
from a unified interface with ease and
simplicity.
You are likely to be well aware of the
myriad of benefits to be had from moving
to a cloud model – they’re often the same
reasons why your customers are making
the move too. Cloud migration is no mean
feat, and should be supported by a master
Cloud service provider that can guide you
through the transition, from changing the
business mind set through to supporting
sales via a specialised accounts and
billing platform and even encompassing
marketing and full staff technical and
business training and enablement.
For established CSPs, Microsoft
Azure enables you to take the next step
in growing your business. This is your
opportunity to grow a larger customer
base, deliver higher value business
services and enjoy a stable, long term
revenue stream from service subscriptions.
No matter where you are in your cloud
journey there’s no getting away from
the fact that demand for cloud services
from end users is growing hard and
fast. With this sea change, the role of
the technology reseller is dramatically
changing. Whether you consider yourself
‘traditional’ in the reseller mould, or
identify as more ‘born in the Cloud’ – the
opportunity to profit from Cloud services
is at an all-time high.
From a base of $48 billion in 2008,
the worldwide public cloud services
market has grown to $209 billion in 2016,
and Gartner predicts consistent growth
to continue, reaching over $380 billion
by 2020. In the UK, according to the
Cloud Industry Forum (CIF), overall cloud
adoption among businesses of all sizes
now stands at 88%, with 67% of users
expecting to increase their use of cloud
by March 2018. Since 2010, the cloud
adoption rate has increased by 83%.
This explicit opportunity for value
added resellers, systems integrators,
managed service providers and ISVs
cannot be undersold; now is the time
to elevate yourself as a Cloud Solution
Provider (CSP). If you are already an
established CSP, there is no better time
to accelerate your offering focused
heavily on an Infrastructure as a Service
practice. Today, this next step in digital
transformation is no longer an option for
channel partners, but an essential part of
the journey towards seizing the opportunity
and guaranteeing a profitable future.
The market is promising rapid business
growth for those that succeed, and those
that fail to advance will be left behind.
Remove complexity – add consultancy
In order to realise the potential of
Cloud Computing services like Azure,
With a focus on high reliability,
operational excellence, cost-
effectiveness, environmental
sustainability, and a trustworthy online
experience for customers and partners
worldwide.
The Azure platform delivers:
n
increased scalability, with no big
upfront investments and easily
expandable services
n
elasticity, enabling bursting and
maintaining a balance between
license need and license cost
n
resilience, with enhanced continuity,
stability and security through cost-
effective redundant and non-location
dependent architectures.
No matter where
you are in your
cloud journey,
the mantra for
the channel is
now to remove
the complexity
and uncertainty
of digital
transformation
for your
customers,
and to add
expertise and
value-added
consultancy
