Do we have our heads in the Cloud?

Advice 2010-04-21 14:42

Bell Micro's Scott Murphy considers what the cloud represents for resellers and their customers and how best to

Scott Murphy, HP & Symantec divisional leader, Bell Micro, considers what the cloud represents for resellers and their customers and how best to translate any opportunities into a sale.

Cloud computing largely represents an entirely new concept, and value, to consumers and organisations alike. Essentially, it enables an organisation to access every layer of the technology stack it needs, from infrastructure, data and applications to information, without the need to install and run hardware and applications in a data centre.

What actually constitutes “a cloud” for many has been one of the most challenging debates, and it continues to remain unclear as there is more than one type of cloud solution; depending on if you’re focusing on infrastructure, or services.

First and foremost, there is the cloud dedicated to an organisation, or shared with others through a managed service or outsourced provider. Secondly, there is the shared service cloud, where services are provisioned, managed, shared, and made available with a guaranteed level of resiliency and efficiency.
Cloud strategy
Fundamentally, what organisations now need to do is step back and assess their existing strategies, IT environments and projects objectively in order to understand how they can evolve and reuse the existing infrastructure to form a cloud based entity; whether it be infrastructure or service driven.

As yet, organisations are not necessarily setting up teams or pilot programmes to specifically address cloud as their attention remains more broadly focussed on the issue of innovation itself. In reality however, and as the 2009 InformationWeek Analytics Survey suggests, only 30 percent of IT budgets are actually spent on innovation, the other 70 percent is on operational delivery. This puts the real engagement level of cloud, for most organisations in the UK, into immediate perspective.
Adding value
What Bell Micro sees time and again are organisations looking at how they can use IT solutions to innovate more often but they also need to realise what solutions they can implement – such as virtualisation – within the cloud. The aid given to these customers by their channel partners can change that 30/70 balance, enabling them to innovate and maximise business growth.

As a valued added distributor Bell Micro has developed a set of value propositions and issues based business messages that, when combined with tangible products, solutions and services are deliverable right now and can enable reseller partners to help deliver new options to existing customers.