How to stay competitive and relevant in the cloud market

Vic Booysen, head of Cloudmania.

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The cloud is no longer the digitisation era's hot new technology. It's now the foundation on which companies are building progress. According to BMIT's 2023 SA Cloud Survey, 23% of local companies are fully migrated to the cloud, 18% are mostly migrated and 39% are halfway there. Even if we divide the market into its various cloud models, such as fully cloud native, hybrid, multicloud or primarily consuming cloud software services directly or through suppliers, it's a fact that the cloud is now the dominant technology foundation layer.

Yet, while this is great news for modernisation, it poses challenges for resellers who want to enter the cloud market or continue reaping the rewards of offering cloud solutions and services. Cloud has, in many spaces, become a commodity, making it harder to sustain healthy margins or invest in delivering new cloud-based solutions.

"Cloud resellers don't always have the right skills or resources to take solutions and address business needs to their customers," says Vic Booysen, head of Cloudmania. "It's not that they're just there and now they don't have the skills. But the nature of the cloud market means they have to be more creative and consider many more factors."

Two examples illustrate this issue. One is the growing presence of major public cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and the Google Cloud Platform, as well as more specialised providers such as Oracle. Gaining and maintaining skills in these different ecosystems, as well as keeping up with their dizzying variety of services, is a daunting task even for big providers.

Security represents the second example. It's not enough to provide only cloud services, and it's insufficient to add security afterwards for basic protection. Modern cyber security requires more skills and product knowledge woven into cloud products.

The cloud market is also more demanding. Customers looking for cloud solutions may have bespoke expectations. Some want to use commodity services such as office suites or backup services. Many expect nuanced answers to their requirements. Most companies are already in the cloud and want to expand innovation, value, automation, visibility and efficiency. Some want new creative enhancements architected for their systems, while others need better management of cloud costs and visibility.

Resellers must meet these demands while focusing on their core strengths, yet they cannot be expected to do it all in-house, especially if they want to price their offerings competitively and profitably. That is a tall order even for some of the largest technology resellers. But not if a reseller has an experienced and broadly skilled cloud enablement partner.

"Cloud resellers have to transform their businesses," says Booysen. "That's really where Cloudmania plays a big role. One of our foundations is to provide thought leadership, to provide skills enablement to the partners, to build those practices and then jointly, to take these solutions and the design packages to market."

Cloudmania is a solutions and services aggregator developed as a partner channel-focused brand within Liquid C2, the major connectivity and security provider with a strong foothold in the multicloud market. Cloudmania has become a premium channel provider of cloud services to the partner ecosystem.

Cloudmania's ability to serve resellers is most evident in its online marketplace. This vast platform gives resellers direct access to procuring different cloud services from Cloudmania, and forms the core of its market philosophy.

Self-provisioning is one pillar. However, resellers also appreciate insight into market opportunities, whether new trends, popular use cases or under-exploited cloud services and programmes. They also value help to design and test cloud-based products and support to their customers when things go wrong. Then there is security, a necessary solution that Cloudmania Partner Specialists provide in-depth support on to ensure effective and correct management at a reseller and customer level.

"Resellers that can handle these requirements are making headway in the emerging and maturing cloud world, and the smart ones do it with the backing of a partner like Cloudmania – helping its reseller partners stay competitive, relevant and profitable in the cloud era," says Booysen.

Website: https://liquidc2.com/