Raif Mehmet, VP EMEA, Bitglass explains how cloud adoption will create prospects for channel businesses.
Over the last five years, global cloud adoption has grown at an astonishing rate. To put this into context, a recent study by Bitglass into 2019 cloud adoption trends found that almost 90% of businesses have now deployed some sort of cloud-based infrastructure or tools to aid productivity and performance. For service providers, this presents an enormous opportunity – providing a host of challenges are dealt with first.
For organisations that adopt Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), the benefits of cloud adoption can be numerous, including the reduction (or even elimination) of expensive on-premises infrastructure and the ability to scale IT resources at the touch of a button. Looking at the adoption rates of the market leader – Amazon Web Services (AWS) – offers some useful insight. In 2019, the percentage of organisations using AWS reached 20%, reflecting a positive increase on 2018’s 14%.
AWS adoption is widespread and hasn’t been confined to any specific sector or market niche. The platform is most popular in the technology sector at 32%, closely followed by media (28%), telecoms (27%), education (26%) and non-profit (20%). In fact, exponential growth in cloud adoption – from 24% to 86% over the last five years – has enabled businesses from nearly every industry sector to enjoy more efficient and flexible working practises.
Anytime there is a change of direction within IT, there is opportunity for the channel. The move from premises apps to the public cloud is a once in a lifetime shift impacting every company in every industry. Channel partners that can establish credibility and expertise as a trusted cloud partner will benefit immensely as their customers work through the security, compliance, privacy and other concerns associated with cloud adoption.
This is significant for the channel because periods of great change are also periods of much learning and much confusion within the enterprise. Decision makers will look to trusted partners during these times to ensure that they are considering all available information and making sound decisions.
There is a whole host of new companies bringing their solutions to market, all of whom are looking for the quickest way to grow their brand presence and their customer base. Almost all of these companies will decide that resellers are the best way to reach those companies. At the same time, enterprises will be looking for a broad range of other applications to integrate into these cloud apps for purposes ranging from security to business intelligence. The channel has a great opportunity to bring to market Value Added solutions that speed the enterprise path to successful cloud adoption.