Private cloud providers are turning to the public cloud - AWS

AWS UK boss Gavin Jackson claims MSPs are offloading infrastructure services to AWS to focus on their services offering

The increased presence of the public cloud in the UK gives MSPs the chance to step away from infrastructure and focus on the services they offer, according to AWS' UK boss Gavin Jackson.

Speaking to CRN today at the official launch of AWS' re:Start training programme Jackson said that AWS is increasingly seeing MSPs and hosting providers offload the infrastructure work to the cloud giant in order to focus on services.

AWS' UK datacentre region went live in December last year shortly after Microsoft launched in London, Durham and Cardiff.

"The managed service providers - emphasising ‘managed', and Rackspace is a great example of this - they've realised that really their core competency is in supporting and managing customers' experiences and managing their applications," he said.

"They leave the undifferentiated bit, the infrastructure bit, to AWS and we're actually seeing demand for that. KCOM is another example of a company that is looking for us to take on the infrastructure so they can build excellent businesses on top of them."

Rackspace launched its AWS services offering in 2015; while KCOM was named as a partner on AWS' public sector programme last year.

QA Consulting is an AWS partner and speaking to CRN managing director Tony Lysak said that all of the firm's government and public sector customers are looking to move to the public cloud, which he said will put a strain on MSPs and managed hosting providers in the private cloud market.

"We have the capability [to offer private cloud services] but we don't do it because why would we invest in what I personally consider a dying paradigm of buying and owning and managing your own infrastructure?" He said.

"Historically, 10 years ago we did run private cloud but I think what we're going to see in the UK is that the private cloud companies that have a UK data footprint are slowly going to erode.

"We're already seeing people that did have cloud offerings globally now moving to a service provision on top of AWS."

Lysak did say however that private cloud providers with UK datacentres could have a part to play if end users don't want to put all their eggs in one basket.

Some clients, he said, might want a second provider as a form of back-up or if they do not want to have their entire business reliant on one large public cloud provider, which could present opportunities for more boutique private cloud firms.