Reimagining possibilities: delivering a multi-cloud ecosystem to channel partners
Channel partners play a critical role in helping customers overcome challenges around adopting multi-clouds.
As a telecoms reseller, system integrator or BPO, you’re probably aware that many of your customers are looking at migrating and adopting multi-cloud solutions to improve their end-customer and employee experience.
It’s understandable, as it means they can avoid vendor lock-in, get instant access to innovation and leverage the best pricing available depending on region, availability or performance. In fact, it’s for these reasons that a recent report showed 92% of customers are now looking at using a multi-cloud strategy.
But that’s just one side of the story. Despite the many benefits of a multi-cloud set up, implementing a multi-cloud strategy on their own can bring considerable challenges for your customers, particularly if they are operating in multiple countries.
There are three broad challenges your customers are facing as they adopt a multi-cloud strategy:
1. Complexity drives up cost
Too often, when customers adopt a multi-cloud approach, they end up with a complex and fragmented service layer and they have to communicate with multiple providers and use separate teams to manage each of their clouds. It’s frustrating because it undermines the fundamental reason they moved to the cloud, which was convenience and cost-reduction. They thought the cloud would be cheaper because there was no CapEx, but with all these unexpected extras, costs easily spiral out of control and they lose the competitive edge they were hoping for. Leading analysts reveal that, while customers are rapidly adopting cloud solutions to achieve flexibility and reduce the cost to serve, two in every three fail to achieve those objectives and 80% overshoot their budget.
Your customers are looking to you for a system of service management that’s easy to manage and helps them keep on top of their budget.
2. Regulation varies from region to region
Your customers are experts and specialists in their business needs and requirements, but when it comes to multi-country operations, they look to you for the local knowledge that will help them through the maze of regulatory challenges. Navigating rules and compliance for different regions when using multiple providers can be extremely complex, especially if they’re not experienced in operating in those geographic areas. For a start, switching voice from PTSN to IP is different depending on each country’s situation and, similarly, it can be difficult to get WebRTC solutions set up and compliant in each region. Regulation, service availability and prohibitive costs are all barriers that prevent your customers from getting the reach, performance and service they want in certain countries.
3. Lack of migration and adoption experience
A successful move to a multi-cloud set up requires a deep-dive focus into two areas – migration and adoption.
Getting migration right is about reviewing the as-is environment and forward planning for the environment that migration will bring. It’s critical to use migration as an opportunity to simplify their technology and operational environment and create new ways of working.
An agile adoption strategy is important to a successful move to clouds because it takes forward planning to make multi-cloud adoption seamless. Agile adoption is important to accelerate the realisation of the business case and to avoid overspend. Most customers assume moving to public cloud is easy, but according to leading analysts, 70% of cloud adoptions fail just after 20% of the journey is completed. When you work with your customers, you’ll need to get them to think creatively about how they can effectively adopt new solutions and create an adoption-based design. They’ll need to understand that integration is not just about the platforms, but is also about integrating their people, processes and skills.
Reimagining the possibilities
We’ve been operating in multi-cloud environments from their inception. We have a clear vision of their potential and strong routes to make that vision a reality for organisations. You’ll bring your industry expertise - whether that’s in AI solutions, voice biometrics or CRM - and your understanding of domestic markets to the partnership. And we’ll bring our pre-existing regulatory frameworks for multiple regions, the global reach of our underlying infrastructure and an already well-established ecosystem.
If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you and your customers experience the exciting, new world of multi-cloud, please get in touch with us.