Ali Din
by Ali Din is Sr. Vice President and CMO at dinCloud
As a reseller or Managed Service Provider (MSP), we know that mobility is on the rise. Whether that manifests itself as a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy or in some other form – we know that end users are becoming more mobile, carrying more devices and are no longer chained to their desks. According to Forrester Research, 34 million Americans work from home (at least occasionally) today and they expect that number will rise to 63 million by 2016; Gartner predicts that this drive to mobility will become a $1 trillion market in the next four years.
Telecommuting, or working from a location anywhere outside of a centralized organizational work place has benefits, including the ability to attract talent beyond the company’s local geography. And of course, that in turn further requires the need to support mobility in the enterprise.
Some stats say that 1 in 4 end-customers are going to move to the cloud. While some customers aren’t 100% convinced, here are a few benefits that you can share with potential end users and current customers.
Why Cloud for Remote Employees
The telecommuting movement drives a great deal of interest in cloud computing. Cloud can better serve a workforce that’s as likely to work at the local Starbucks as the corner conference room because they can push processing, storage, and enterprise applications to a middle tier between the company and the user. In other words, connectivity, security, capacity management, and resiliency become somebody else’s problem (e.g. the MSP).
Anywhere Access
As cloud computing and mobile technology continues to mature, more employers and employees are enjoying the benefits of telecommuting. The days of IT departments setting up VPNs so people can work from home are no longer a necessity. With solutions like hosted virtual desktops, remote employees can have immediate access to all their files and applications from anywhere, anytime, using any device.
Built-in Business Continuity
Cloud computing helps organizations meet their business continuity and disaster recovery needs, and support remote employees by providing a secure way to access corporate data, even if corporate headquarters is affected by a disastrous event.
Secure Access to Network
The traditional way of providing remote access to these employees increased complexity and security issues. Many a sleepless night was had by IT administrators cringing that some remote user would spread a worm or Trojan through the entire organization. However, with cloud hosted desktops for example, organizations can provide secure remote access to their remote employees, and virus outbreaks are no longer a headache in a hosted desktop environment.
Cash Flow Management
When considering cloud services, the cash flow for an organization is less stringent. The need for large capital expenditures goes down, maintenance costs are reduced, and companies can pay monthly. Most cloud services also offer flexibility as the company expands or contracts to adjust its spending. This flexibility and enhanced cash flow allows the business to compete and invest directly in the marketplace rather than spend time and energy on operations.
Positioning Cloud Services to Customers
Many organizations are already implementing or expanding cloud solutions, an ideal technology to support telecommuting efforts. The journey to the cloud is not simple – customers need assessments and guidance. This is where a reseller or MSP can become a consultant to the customer.
Encourage your customers to look at cloud holistically. Adding a service for hosted virtual servers for one application might be helpful, but running a server infrastructure completely in the cloud creates better connectivity and resilience in the environment. Similarly, evaluating other cloud-based services, such as hosted virtual desktops, provides a way to move the business to the cloud (through “business provisioning”) instead of just a workload or application.
Once the decision is made to move to the cloud, the consultant partner should also assist customers with data migration. This can be a big task to take on depending on the amount of data involved, and threshold for downtime to replicate data.
Lastly, cloud services enable resellers and MSPs with a recurring revenue stream, not just from the subscription to the cloud, but also from providing value-added services. These can range from monitoring services, to ongoing maintenance and support. It allows the partner to become an extension of the customer’s IT organization while still giving the customer control and visibility to their virtual private data center. Customers can enjoy the best of both worlds, control and security, while offloading the day-to-day management headaches of running IT operations.
For customers that are on the go, cloud is an excellent prescription for a pain point that they can’t resolve on their own.
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