As Public Cloud Demand Soars, Vendors, MSP Talk Challenge, Opportunity
Learn about public cloud's most pressing issues and the challenges cloud vendors need to address.
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Cloudways’ Robert Jacobi: “Trying to figure out what the real points of differentiation are. A lot is getting commoditized. There’s a baseline that the indies and big hyperscalers have achieved together … with a 10% difference in feature functionality sets. … Right now we take the view that all of [the cloud vendors] are the same.”
Linode’s Blair Lyon: “Do you think we’ll all get dragged into the AWS mindset? Do we all try to be AWS or go open-source?”
Linode’s Blair Lyon: “The 2010 decade was one of consolidation. The 2020s are about portability, multicloud.”
Rackspace’s Renee Taylor: “We’re trying to focus a little more to differentiate who we’re going to market with and building out a vertical offering — health care, financial services — being more targeted with whom we work with, more professional services, and looking at how to work with the global system integrators.”
Vultr’s Shane Zide: “Retail clients and prospects are afraid of AWS competing with them. As the Big 3 go toward the enterprise, the indies have more opportunities in smaller, SMB, midmarket.
Linode’s Blair Lyon: “Being able to sell solutions instead of infrastructure. … We want to keep it simple. … We want to keep it free of lock-in.”
Vultr’s Shane Zide: “Retail clients and prospects are afraid of AWS competing with them. As the Big 3 go toward the enterprise, the indies have more opportunities in smaller, SMB, midmarket.
Linode’s Blair Lyon: “Being able to sell solutions instead of infrastructure. … We want to keep it simple. … We want to keep it free of lock-in.”
Cloud computing continues to dominate technology conversations. Consider that, just this year alone, Gartner expects organizations to shell out $495 billion for public cloud services. That figure should reach $600 billion in 2023.
Neither number is chump change. And the demand proves that cloud computing is not a passing phase. Rather, cloud (and, mostly public cloud) serves as the new foundation of organizations’ ongoing digital transformation efforts. Those can come in the form of across-the-board public cloud or as a mix of public and private cloud (for example, multicloud, hybrid cloud).
Given the popularity – and complexity – of cloud, Channel Futures once again invited vendors and partners to join its Cloud Roundtable at the 2022 Channel Partners Conference & Expo. The inaugural roundtable took place last November and featured Google Cloud, SADA, AllCloud and Ensono.
This second time around, we focused on the smaller, more independent providers, and those who have different takes on public cloud. To that end, this spring’s Cloud Roundtable participants were:
Amanda Lee, vice president, global communications at Pax8, a cloud marketplace distributor.
Blair Lyon, vice president of cloud experience at Linode.
Renee Taylor, vice president of global alliances and channel chief at Rackspace, a managed cloud computing provider.
Robert Jacobi, director of WordPress for Cloudways, a managed service provider.
Shane Zide, global vice president of channel for Vultr, part of The Constant Company.
In part one of this two-part series, see our slideshow above to find out what participants had to say about some of public cloud’s most pressing issues, from the challenges cloud vendors need to address to the best opportunities for partners.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Kelly Teal or connect with her on LinkedIn. |
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