Mix and match for cloud support

Business needs must be assessed and matched to the right infrastructure providers, says Richard Gooding

I have heard an industry insider claim that cloud functionality would benefit only multinationals such as Google and Amazon. This is a glass-half-full viewpoint, suggesting that yet another opportunity is slipping from our hands.

Cloud functionality is the right technology for its time. It will eventually help businesses of all sizes keep up to date with the increasing pace of content creation in a budget-sensitive and agile way.

Spending the IT budget is more difficult than ever for many companies, with so much information swirling around, and so many opinions to consider. Most users do not have specialists on staff to implement and oversee new cloud deployments, let alone do any regular maintenance.

Ideally, this expertise can be sourced from a partner located near the user.

Imagine the scenario where a cloud vendor’s server has failed. It is the second major outage on this server in six months.

All customer data on the host is lost. The customer needs to create a new server from backup, and deploy the old server's IP address on the new one.

In this truly mission-critical situation the customer and its constituent users would likely be best served by a dedicated local service provider. Ideally, it should be the same team that helped integrate the functionality into the business in the first place.

Maintaining your edge in the IT services business can be tricky. What capabilities will attract the most interest? How can finite resources be most effectively invested? How does a service provider best diversify its offering to prosper and grow?

The industry succeeds when the appropriate capabilities are adopted by resellers.

Cloud can benefit every business from sole proprietorships to multinationals, but the varying service needs of users should be matched with a diverse and geographically dispersed service and support infrastructure.

Richard Gooding is head of EMEA marketing at i365