Big-name integrators prepare for cloud onslaught

Vendor rhetoric is now being matched in the channel with Logicalis and 2e2 both betting big on cloud

Kelly: The receptivity that we have had has been good

The channel battle for dominance of the cloud is heating up as a number of top integrators revealed it will be a key focus of their go-to-market strategy this year.

Logicalis opens doors on its purpose-built £7.5m datacentre this month as its full cloud proposition hits the market.

UK managing director Tom Kelly had previously stated that his firm is more than a year ahead of its rivals in the cloud arena. He told CRN that cloud expertise will be key to success in the coming years.

“People are looking at the IT infrastructure, the intellectual property rights and the business applications they have,” he said.

“They are moving the likes of security out to people such as us. So long as we get the price point and the services right, that is the way.

“The receptivity that we have had has been good, [both] from people in the public sector and across the whole enterprise area.”

Nick Grossman, business development director at rival 2e2, claimed the opening of the datacentre was just the first step for Logicalis.

He revealed that his firm is also remodelling its go-to-market approach to be more cloud centric.

“We are relaunching and repackaging how we lead our sales [pitches] to put cloud in, otherwise we are in danger of losing market share,” said Grossman.

“Cloud is going to come to the fore as much as the other factors that people have traditionally used to compare integrators, [such as] accreditations and reference sets. You have to put your credentials on the table in a compelling way to be able to win cloud business.”

Grossman stressed that his firm has been providing cloud services for 10 years and has datacentres stocked with 1,500 servers and 10TB of disk space.

Both Logicalis and 2e2 were among a host of integrators that heard Cisco bang the cloud drum throughout its recent partner sumit.

Keith Goodwin, senior vice president of the vendor’s worldwide partner organisation, told parners that cloud should be their top investment priority this year.

“Get ready for cloud-based services as a future business model,” he said.