Amazon Web Services: 3 Signs of Channel Success

Admittedly, most VARs have yet to jump into Amazon’s cloud. But that may soon change. Here are three prime examples highlighting how Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) are catching on with solutions providers. In some cases, the solutions providers may not even realize they’re working in Amazon’s cloud. Take a look.

First up, Kaseya‘s new SaaS tools for VARs runs in Amazon EC2, confirms Tim Dickinson, regional director for Kaseya Australia and New Zealand, in an email to MSPmentor. In that note, Dickinson wrote: “We use Amazon (EC2) and have tested it world-wide, zero latency ! We love Amazon!”

Clearly, EC2 is critical to Kaseya’s SaaS Partner Program (KSP), where ASCII Group, Cloud Services Depot, Ingram Micro, Jamcracker, Lenovo and the Virtual Administrator division of Network Depot are promoting Kaseya’s IT Toolkit (a SaaS application) to channel partners.

The channel partners, in turn, may not even realize the remote management tools they’re using run in Amazon’s cloud.

Kaseya isn’t the company making channel and partner moves in Amazon’s cloud.

Example 2

Next up, take a look at Levementum, a cloud integrator that specializes in SugarCRM (open source CRM) and Compiere (open source ERP) customer deployments. And yes, many of those projects involve Levementum deploying customer applicatons in Amazon’s cloud.

When The VAR Guy needs some perspective on cloud integrators, our resident blogger typically calls Levementum.

Example 3

OpenBI is another integrator moving customers into Amazon’s cloud. The Chicago-based solutions provider, which focuses on open source business intelligence, has helped customers with Pentaho-oriented deployments in Amazon’s cloud.

Other Moves Worth Noting

Meanwhile, a lengthy list of online backup and storage management software companies now offer compatibility and integration with Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3). The idea is to allow on-premise or online backup systems to gain redundancy via Amazon.

It sounds simple. But The VAR Guy wonders: How many VARs and end-customers are actually tying backup to Amazon’s cloud? Hmmm… too soon to say. (Or perhaps The VAR guy is just too lazy to go find the answer.)

Don’t Believe the Hype

Of course, it’s important to keep the cloud hype in perspective. Only 6.7 percent of MSPmentor 100 survey participants leverage Amzon S3. And only 5.5 percent of the survey participants leverage Amazon EC2. The MSPmentor 100 survey (2010 edition) ran October to December 2009. Results are published here.

Still there are anecdotal signs of progress everywhere. Kaseya’s SaaS strategy will likely give hundreds (or thousands…) of MSPs access to remote management tools that are actually running in Amazon’s cloud. And smaller integrators like Levementum and OpenBI prove the cloud integrator trend is for real.