5 Reasons to Overcome Resistance & Leverage Cloud Like Your Business Depends on It
Some managed services providers and IT services companies may view the cloud as a threat, hesitant to relinquish control of their customers’ environments to larger players such as Microsoft, Amazon or Google.
But the cloud isn’t going anywhere, and enterprises are already demanding the features and benefits it provides.
Savvy MSPs and IT services firms aren’t resisting incorporating the cloud into their offerings—they’re embracing it!
Why are these companies willing to build solutions on someone else’s cloud infrastructure?
Because it’s the smart and profitable thing to do.
No amount of naysaying or denial will prevent your clients from eventually moving to the cloud.
So why not help them get there and succeed instead of letting another provider swoop in and steal your business?
Here are five reasons your company shouldn’t just be thinking about the cloud but should be fundamentally shifting your offerings to these platforms today:
Redundancy
Your data center may be able to withstand hurricanes, earthquakes, heat waves and power outages.
You might have multiple locations in different time zones or even continents. You might have spare racks of servers ready to handle the load when something fails or demand surges… but did you pull in $3.7 billion last quarter?
Probably not, but that was the revenue for Amazon Web Services last quarter – a 43 percent year-over-year increase.
What that impressive stat means to your business is that cloud providers are simply operating at a scale most other businesses could never imagine, which also means they have rock-solid redundancy that you basically get for free when you switch your solutions to a top-tier cloud services provider.
When you’re running on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, your uptime is practically untouchable… if the Internet is working, your services will be working, too.
All without you having to manage a fail-safe environment and take on the expenses that come with it.
Scalability
When your clients are experiencing success and growing, demand for your services should also increase.
While this is normally a fantastic event, it can be a challenge when you’re managing your own servers.
It’s a delicate balance between having enough excess capacity to support your client base without any delays and having to expend capital too soon and maintain a more robust environment than you actually need.
Leveraging the cloud alleviates this entire conundrum.
When your demand increases, you simply buy more cloud computing power and storage as you need it.
If you have a sudden spike in usage, you don’t have to buy permanently for that peak event, you can just pay as you go.
And if your demand shrinks or is extremely seasonal, you’re no longer sitting on unused equipment or bandwidth, you can just buy less or, in some cases, sell any unneeded capacity on a reseller market.
Price
Your customers are already demanding SaaS solutions and the pricing flexibility that comes with them.
Moving these offerings to the cloud helps you keep your costs down to maintain market competitiveness.
The competition is already benefitting from the cost efficiencies a cloud-based environment brings, so if you’re starting from a higher, self-hosted set of costs or paying a third-party to host your solutions, your pricing is going to be more expensive or you’ll start taking a huge margin hit to remain competitive.
Security
No matter how many firewalls and virus protection protocols you’ve installed, an independent solution just can’t compete with the rock-solid security the major cloud players have to offer.
Not to mention how much expense and resources you’ll have to spend on keeping up with the latest threats and protocols to fend off the various threats to customer data and uptime.
Moving to the cloud makes this someone else’s problem so you can focus on your areas of expertise and value-add instead of what your clients essentially view as a commodity. Without having to constantly worry about fighting the bad guys and protecting your clients’ data, you can concentrate on innovation and expanding your business.
Cutting Edge Technology
If there’s one thing technology has taught us, it’s that tomorrow’s next big thing will be yesterday’s outdated set of specs before you know it.
Keeping up with the latest hardware is a battle that never ends, and a pricey one as well.
Let your cloud services provider worry about processor speeds and solid state hard drives, operating system updates and rack-mounted cooling technologies.
It’s a rat race you’ll never finish running and one that gobbles up priceless time and resources without adding direct value to your clients.
Running your solutions in the cloud means you can let those hardware specs gather dust while you focus on the best applications and customer support in the business.
Kirill Bensonoff is a seasoned entrepreneur and the founder of Unigma, a unified cloud management platform. Kirill blogs regularly about cloud, tech and growing your managed services business. He can be reached at kirill@unigma.com.
