01732 759725 34 CLOUD Mark Appleton ALSO joins marketplace gold rush with launch of ALSO Cloud UK of cloud-based applications and IT as-aservice solutions more strategically. “The UK is the biggest IT services market in Europe. Yes, it's quite over distributed, but there is space for us as well, especially when you consider how well developed the ALSO Cloud Marketplace is and the benefits of migrating to or integrating with it," explains Appleton. “We’re not here for the short-term. We have a very aggressive five-year business plan and believe we can seriously establish ourselves in the UK and become number one. These are tough numbers to deliver, of course, but we have a team of 11 now and are starting the hunting process for onboarding resellers.” Appleton will also be recruiting new vendors for ACMP in the UK. “In mainland Europe, there are 100-plus vendors online. We are starting off with the two critical ones, which are Microsoft and Adobe, and we have another 14 or 15 ISVs that will be on-boarded in the next week. Not all vendors are pan-EU, some have national decision-making and some are quite localised, so we are continually talking to different vendors and are now speeding up that process to get them on-boarded as quickly as possible. “Our plan is to get to that European number. It will take a few months, of course, but what's critical is that, as well as Microsoft and Adobe, we have the important cybersecurity vendors to kick start the process. We have Acronis, CrowdStrike, Hoxhunt, Vade, DigiCert and nexetic ready now and another eight that are just waiting for final approval.” ACMP benefits So what does Appleton think ACMP offers UK resellers, MSPs and SIs? “I think the bigger resellers are very interested in our white label option, really integrating their ERP with our system and having it branded with their logos. Smaller resellers are happy to do a lot of work manually because they're not managing 10,000 unique users but maybe just 100 or 150. For the bigger guys, getting the platform integrated, white-labelling it, connecting their systems and the automation of that is critical for the management of their business and invoicing out to their customers. That's one big benefit,” he says. “Many of our competitors have daily invoicing, which can cause problems if you have a lot of licences. We do a ‘post-month one’ aggregated invoice that resellers can download and use to invoice their end users if they've not used APIs to connect the platform with their own ERP and billing systems.” He also cites the 24-hour support available to resellers, which removes the friction and hassle of moving from an existing cloud marketplace to ACMP, and the expertise of the central support team. “Not all resellers want to migrate during the week, so we do a lot of migrations at weekends to make sure there's no impact on their business. We have a huge support team that manages all the migrations, takes the workload off the reseller’s desk and migrates everything on their behalf. “And we have a very strong dedicated central team, with central competencies across key vendors and many product portfolios. We have someone in Group managing the whole thing, like I was doing for printing supplies, then we'll have regional people and then we’ll have local people. They're all connected back to Group and the support level there is extremely high, with all the requisite competencies and certifications.” Future plans ACMP is part of Service, the third and newest of ALSO’s three areas of activity, covering subscription-based cloud offerings as well as platforms for cybersecurity, virtualisation and AI. The other two are Supply (transactional sales of hardware and software) and Solutions (supporting resellers with the delivery of complex IT projects and marketing solutions for verticals). So, does the €12.6 billion turnover ALSO Group have plans to extend these other areas of its business to the UK? On that, Appleton will only say that for the time being the UK will follow the pattern of ACMP’s roll-out in Spain in 2021. “Spain still only has the ALSO Cloud Marketplace and it will be the same for the UK. That doesn't mean that that will be the case for the next 10 years, as we’re always looking out for and acquiring companies across Europe that will bring additional benefits to the ALSO group.” ALSO Group, the Switzerland-based pan-European technology provider, is expanding its international reach and tapping into growing demand for cloud marketplaces with the launch of the ALSO Cloud Marketplace (ACMP) in the UK. Europe’s largest marketplace for cloud solutions and services helps resellers/ MSPs move to an as-a-service model by automating the process of procuring and renewing subscriptions and managing, upgrading and invoicing licences, saving them time and money and reducing customer churn. ACMP can also be used by ISVs/ CSPs to market their own solutions and is available in a white-label version for customers that want to provide an ownbranded cloud marketplace. Although ACMP is only now being launched in the UK, ALSO developed its marketplace almost a decade ago. Since then, it has continued to develop the platform, which is now available in 30 European countries and 144 worldwide, directly or through platform-as-a-service (PaaS) partners. Offering 1,600 services from more than 100 vendors, ACMP is not limited to software but can be used to provide hardware, laptops, servers and networks as-a-service, plus integrated services for cybersecurity, IoT and AI. “It's a very mature part of the business for us, but it's also a part of the business that is growing hugely year on year, at around 44% last year,” explains Mark Appleton, who as Chief Customer Officer for ALSO Cloud UK heads up ACMP’s rollout in the UK. Appleton, who has been based in the UK for 24 years, first with Alpha International and then with ALSO, managing printing and supplies for the Group internationally, says the time is right for ALSO to return to the UK, having moved Alpha’s UK operations to the Netherlands after acquiring the company in 2014. In the interim, ALSO has continued to supply UK resellers with printer supplies, albeit from the Netherlands, while ACMP has been active in the UK, but only through a PaaS partner. The launch of ALSO Cloud UK will enable the Group to target an addressable UK market of 20 million corporate users ALSO enters UK https://also.com
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