EMC claims partners suffering from 'apps-led revenue leakage'

SIs and outsourcing firms are giving away money to AWS by bypassing own IT departments on cloud-based apps, EMEA alliances boss argues in blog

Systems integrators and outsourcing firm are losing revenue due to the phenomenon of "apps-led revenue leakage", according to EMC's vice president of EMEA global alliances, Ross Fraser.

In a blog post, Fraser said application development teams at EMC partners are often using third parties infrastructure providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) - rather than their own internal IT team - to support the cloud-based applications they are building for customers.

Partners should avoid this by building their own hybrid clouds, he advised.

Although partner organisations are engaging AWS because their apps teams view the internal IT department as unresponsive or costly, this approach will cost them in the long run, Fraser argued.

"Clearly, this perception needs to change if outsourcers and systems integrators are to avoid what amounts to a considerable amount of money in apps-led leaked revenue," he said.

"To meet this challenge, I would advise IT departments at partner organisations to actively transform and to redefine their roles within their businesses. By deploying a hybrid cloud infrastructure, the IT department can offer cloud services every bit as agile, responsive and cost effective as they can get from the likes of Amazon."

Fraser then moved into sales-pitch mode as he suggested the partner organisation's vendors are ideally placed to "help build a business case that directly aligns the internal infrastructure with the apps that their developers are building for customers".

"The right vendor will work with their partners to create watertight value propositions that make the internal IT department competitive to public cloud alternatives," he said. "In part this involves showing IT teams how they can add value to applications lifecycle management by creating a blueprint of the apps they have on offer."

Such an approach will give developers the tools they need to build "winning" apps while every penny they spend on storage infrastructure goes back into their business, rather than leaking out to an AWS, Fraser said.