Here’s something that caught our attention: Business Technology Partners (BTP) President Josh Aaron noted in early July 2011 that BTP’s clients are initiating conversations about adopting a private-cloud model. Aaron’s words were the opposite of what we usually hear from cloud providers and MSPs, which is they often have to be the ones initiating the cloud conversation to convince companies a cloud model would help their business.

BTP, a New York-based IT support, consulting and managed services firm, has been helping enterprise and SMB clients alike since 1997. The company boasts an international base of about 30 SMB clients and about 450 enterprise clients. Now, the company has announced a hosted and managed private cloud service that it says will help SMBs cut costs while enhancing flexibility.

It seems BTP’s definition of “private cloud” is different from other vendors. For many, including companies such as Eucalyptus Systems, “private cloud” refers to legacy on-premises infrastructure turned into a flexible, scalable cloud. But to BTP, dedicated, hosted infrastructure seems to fit the bill.

BTP’s offering includes those hosted private clouds, optional third-party offerings, or both. All of its cloud services are backed by BTP’s TeraCare fixed-fee end-user support program.

Aaron and Vice President of Managed Services Rob Pennoyer noted they’ve seen the cloud recently come into its own in the SMB space.

“We’ve seen activity for a longer period of time — about three years — on the enterprise side, ” Aaron said. “But in the last eight months we’ve seen an uptick in small business clients as they figure out their cloud options.”

Pennoyer noted another cloud computing trend worth mentioning: Clients’ main concerns over cloud adoption is control over their data, which leads into security concerns. “I think they go together,” he said when asked whether control of the data outweighs having a secure network.

BTP is planning a webinar series to address customer concerns about cloud adoption, which is in line with the company’s high-touch philosophy of customer service. But when it comes to the bottom line, BTP is going to be competing for SMB customers with the larger public cloud service offerings such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps. And because it is hosted on its own infrastructure, BTP’s private cloud offering may turn off some customers with compliance concerns.

With additional reporting by Matthew Weinberger.

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