Survey Finds Increase in Cloud and Mobility Offerings
Survey Finds Increase in Cloud and Mobility Offerings by UCStrategies Staff
The 2013 SMB Channel Partner Trends study from analyst firm Techaisle highlights that there has been an increase in the percentage of SMB channel partners that have provided cloud computing services to SMBs over the last year.
The survey finds that the percentage of VARs, SIs, MSPs and SPs (SMB Channel Partners) which provide cloud services has increased from 38 percent in 2012 to 64 percent in 2013. A further 22 percent will make these offerings available in the next year.
The change amongst VARs has been the biggest so far. Around 34 percent offered cloud services to SMB customers a year ago, whereas now the total hits 74 percent.
This change is due to a number of factors, for example, VARs have noticed that the industry has moved in the direction of the cloud; they are more familiar with the cloud business model, and 36 percent providing cloud services are making money and 63 percent have started to make a profit; IT vendors are supporting VARs in provided cloud solutions, and this includes both applications and infrastructure; and SMB customers are asking for cloud-based solutions from their channel partners.
In relation to cloud computing solution offerings, there has been an increase from last year in the percentage of SMB channel partners that provide mobility solutions, but this increase is not as significant as cloud offerings. Mobility solutions are provided to SMBs by 61 percent of channel partners, and another 31 percent seek to provide mobility solutions to SMBs in the coming future.
The biggest increase was with service providers, as less than one-third of these provided mobility solutions in 2012, whereas now, around three-fourths of them do. Channel partners are also more involved in SMB BYOD, and use a range of technologies such as Citrix, Symantec, AirWatch, MobileIron, Cisco, IBM, AmTel, etc.
In the last year, there has been only a 3 percent change in the provision of managed services to SMBs, and this shows that managed services as a solution offering is fully penetrated. Additionally, there has been a decrease in the percent of VARs and SIs that provide remote managed services, and this is surprising.
This decrease can be attributed to the migration of channel partners to more lucrative solution offerings for SMBs, or using virtualization to manage IT. SMBs are also looking for MSPs to offer both onsite and remote managed services at the same price as remote managed services.
Ninety percent of systems integrators provide virtualization to SMBs and only a few service providers offer these solutions. As stated above, 70 percent of managed services providers make virtualization available, and this shows a new trend in the managing of SMBs’ IT and application infrastructure via virtualization solutions.
Other channel partners (around 39 percent) are using this opportunity to support Windows XP migration and the different type of planned virtualization offerings means channel partners have a greater affinity for hosted-virtual-desktop, compared to VDI.
The findings from the survey also highlight that VARs are the most keen to offer SMB data center solutions followed by systems integrators. The market is developing and there are increased margins for servers and storage; this encourages channel partners to provide data center solutions and move away from managed services offerings.
Furthermore, SMBs continue to enhance and improve their IT infrastructure and data center solutions, and are becoming more important as a result. Data center solutions, however, do mean different things to different channel partners, and can include the provision of server solutions, networking solutions and even virtualization and converged infrastructure solutions. (CY) Link