How you will buy cloud resources in the future

CompTIA, an IT trade organization, conducts annual surveys of its members to study how channel vendors embrace cloud computing trends. Four years ago, only 40% of the suppliers surveyed said they were involved in cloud computing services. Last year, the figure jumped to 85%. This year, all the suppliers (a total of 400) said they all offer cloud computing services.

As the cloud computing industry matures, it is becoming clear that the main consumption pattern of using cloud computing resources will be through channel providers. CompTIA Carolyn Spril, the industry analyst at the company, said that the value-added dealer (VAR) has long played an important role in end-user purchasing of IT resources.

"We've seen the shift," she says, "and there's a lot of uncertainty about the role of channel providers in this market." "Some channel suppliers worry that cloud computing will make it easier for suppliers to sell directly to customers." and value-added distributors have found their own profit points.

April says the channel market in cloud computing is divided into four main categories: building cloud services for customers, consolidating cloud services into existing systems, providing ongoing management of cloud services, or becoming trusted consultants in cloud projects. "It's a natural extension of what the channel providers have been doing," she says. ”

CompTIA found that the main cloud services provided by channel partners include e-mail, virtual desktop deployment, helpdesk, storage, and analytics.

In some cases, cloud companies sell products directly to customers. For example, the market-leading IaaS provider Amazon Network Service has a large promotional campaign to encourage users to buy resources directly from the company.

Other companies are embracing their channel suppliers. HP, VMware and CA Technologies, for example, offer "cloud computing" products that allow dealers to encapsulate their products and provide ancillary services, such as installation configuration and consolidation for customers.

Cloud computing is opening up new partnerships. For example, Google traditionally does not have a large channel market, but its cloud computing platform and enterprise applications are bringing new distributors and system integrators. For example, Cloud Sherpas is a consulting firm that is primarily responsible for migrating customers to cloud-based resources, including Google's cloud resources.

Gartner estimates that the cloud market will be a 131 billion-dollar industry this year, with 63% of dealers telling CompTIA that their customers have a very high interest in cloud computing resources.

However, this will undergo a maturing process, and CompTIA's survey found that only 46% of dealers said their cloud computing products and services were fully fledged. The organization notes that the lack of professional consultants to deploy cloud computing resources is an obstacle to broader deployment of cloud computing consulting services. At the same time, end users are concerned about security, downtime, consolidation issues, and data portability.