HashiCorp Cloud Platform Frees Partners to ‘Focus on Solving Customer Challenges’

Get the latest on channel-centric activity at HashiCorp and Nutanix. Plus, the latest numbers on cloud infrastructure spending from IDC reflect the firm’s predictions from May.

HashiCorp’s New Multicloud Managed Service

This week, HashiCorp, which develops automation software for multicloud infrastructure, released its first managed service. Channel partners will be able to resell the product, called HashiCorp Cloud Platform.

HashiCorp’s Michelle Graff

Michelle Graff, global partner chief at HashiCorp, said HashiCorp Cloud Platform comprises the company’s existing products as a service on any cloud.

“HCP provides HashiCorp’s reselling partners with an alternative offering for those customers who require the enterprise functionality for Terraform, Vault, Consul and Nomad to provision, secure, connect and run their applications in the cloud without the requirement of operations expertise on staff to manage the environments,” Graff told Channel Futures. “Because HCP is fully managed by HashiCorp, partners are able to focus on solving customer challenges and delivering business outcomes, while removing the requirements of in-house specialized IT operations skills.”

Graff said HashiCorp Cloud Platform features some unique characteristics partners will want to consider:

These capabilities, she noted, “add value for customers compared to a self-managed software stack for infrastructure automation.”

In terms of best practices to follow when offering HashiCorp Cloud Platform to enterprises, Graff recommends partners develop a customer success plan. That, she said, “is critical to accelerate a customer’s cloud adoption strategy and to ensure alignment to a customer’s business outcomes.”

HashiCorp Cloud Platform remains in beta mode. The vendor will make HCP Consul the first available service, initially supporting Amazon Web Services. HCP Consul will offer secure service networking across EKS, EC2 and other AWS application environments, HashiCorp said. The capability also will enable connections from AWS to other cloud environments and private data centers. After that, HashiCorp will release HCP Vault as the next service available on HashiCorp Cloud Platform; it will first support AWS, too.

Right now HashiCorp is not offering partner incentives because the new service is still in beta. However, “where applicable, HCP will be included in all current and future HashiCorp Partner Network incentive products alongside the enterprise customer-managed software solutions,” Graff said.

IDC’s Stephen Elliott

Stephen Elliot, program vice president at research firm IDC said HashiCorp Cloud Platform reduces enterprises’ cloud infrastructure complexity.

“IT executives want different delivery options…but without the challenges and overhead of having to manage the infrastructure to support it,” Elliot said in a prepared statement. “The managed, as-a-service model provides executives with an opportunity to accelerate cloud deployments, increase productivity, and make use of multi-cloud flexibility.”

Industry activity around multicloud and the channel continues to ramp up. For example, earlier this month, the popularity of multicloud deployments prompted HYCU to debut its Cloud Service Provider program. And the ever-growing demand for multiple public clouds is pushing cloud architects and developers to think more agnostically, which eases implementations and porting for organizations. Gartner analyst Santhosh Rao last year predicted the rise of multicloud, and those forecasts appear to be materializing.

“Multicloud is no longer a matter of ‘if’ — it’s a matter of ‘when,’” Rao said. “Multicloud computing lowers the risk of cloud provider lock-in, and can provide service resiliency and migration opportunities, in addition to the core cloud benefits of agility, scalability and elasticity.”

IDC Predictions Come True: Cloud IT Spending Goes Up, Traditional Plunges

Just as it predicted a couple of months ago, IDC confirms that cloud infrastructure spending is indeed going up amid the coronavirus pandemic, while outlay on traditional, non-cloud plummets.

Combined sales on public and private cloud infrastructure increased 2.2% in the first quarter. However, public cloud…

..outpaced private. Public cloud infrastructure spending reached $10.1 billion, the research firm found. Private cloud infrastructure spending actually declined 6.3% year over year to $4.4 billion.

Meanwhile, non-cloud infrastructure sales fell 16.3% year over year, IDC said.

Analysts attributed all the fluctuation to the COVID-19 crisis. And as the outbreak shows little sign of relenting, IDC said it expects the cloud infrastructure spending pace set in Q1 will continue through the rest of 2020. For the full year, investments in cloud IT infrastructure will surpass spending on non-cloud infrastructure and reach $69.5 billion or 54.2% of the overall IT infrastructure spend, the firm forecast.

IDC also projects spending on private cloud infrastructure to recover this year, growing 5.7% to $47.7 billion. That would represent 68.6% of total cloud infrastructure spend, analysts said.

Nutanix Adds 2 Services to HCI for Remote IT Teams

Nutanix, which just yesterday announced its new channel vice president, this week unveiled two new ways for IT teams to manage cloud environments remotely. The capabilities come as organizations continue to support work-from-home initiatives due to COVID-19.

First up, Nutanix Foundation Central. The solution supports deployment of private cloud infrastructure from one interface, from anywhere. Second, there’s Nutanix Insights for identifying any issues that could impact applications and data availability.

Nutanix will deliver both products through its Foundation Central, Insights and Lifecycle Manager. And, the new additions will be part of Nutanix’s HCI software at no additional cost to customers, the vendor said.