[Avnet] 5 Steps to Accelerate Your Success in the Cloud

How Can I Accelerate My Success in the Cloud? The simple answer is: Knowledge. Many enterprise clients still have a very rudimentary understanding of what’s happening in cloud computing.  While you can’t watch a Master’s golf tournament or travel through the San Francisco International Airport without seeing an advertisement for cloud computing, the education around it pretty much stops there. So here is a five-step plan on how you can get started:

1. As a reseller or VAR, make a decision you’re going to lead with cloud computing. While I know it’s easy to continue down the same path and sell traditional on-premises software and hardware – it’s going to just get harder as time, and technology, progresses.
2. If you’ve already made the business decision, great! Now the challenge is getting your sales and services people educated – first on the industry as a whole and second on the particular products you’re going to be selling. Find the suppliers who will invest in educating your teams.
3. Go educate your customers. They’ve seen the same ads you’ve seen and they’re just as confused.  By the way, some suppliers out there aren’t helping by merely saying “Oh, you can have a private cloud” without knowing much about their business.  Just as a rule of thumb, if you use 10,000 or more servers you should think about providing cloud services to your company and the rest of your industry.  If you use 1,000 or less servers buy your compute and storage cloud services.
4. Develop a plan. Help your customer develop a plan to move to the cloud.  Help them turn a strategic intent into a tactical plan and focus on solutions that don’t cost a lot to make the transition.  You might have a perfect beach side property that goes for $50 a night, but if it cost $5000 to get there you might think twice.
5. Move forward. While the first step for cloud computing is to reduce the cost of operations and improve the quality of service it’s just a staying in business strategy.  The next step is to use the savings you can get for your fundamental infrastructure being managed a different way and invest in delivering information that’s personal and relevant to the customer.  Every business is a service business and service is information that is personal and relevant.