Oracle Gives Cloud Migration a ‘Lift’; Plus, Update Carbon Black Now

Cloud, cloud, cloud. Two days in to the week, partners already have a lot of cloud news flying at them. We’ve compiled those announcements into a short roundup.

Need a preview?

Well, first, if you work with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and feel like you need a “lift,” there’s a new opportunity for migration help.

Next, if you or any customers run the VMware Carbon Black appliance, you need to update to the new version right now. Find out why.

After that, Microsoft has a small announcement regarding its Azure Cloud Services deployment model.

And, finally, channel partners thinking about delivering cloud professional services might want to get going on that. A new report predicts a sizable jump in revenue for the market. Considering the vendors and distributors that now have professional service offerings, even smaller partners can reap the benefits. Read on to get the scoop.

Need a ‘Lift’ With Cloud Migration? Oracle Steps In

Managed service providers and system integrators moving customers to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure have a new option for assistance. Last week, the provider debuted its Cloud Lift Services.

Oracle provides help with cloud migrations via Cloud Lift services.

Oracle Cloud Lift delivers technical and engineering resources throughout a migration at no extra cost, and through just one point of contact. Customers can take advantage of performance analysis, application architecture, hands-on migrations and go-live support. Oracle bills the initiative as a way to work alongside customers until cloud deployments go live as production workloads. The company even offers training for end-user employees.

Most channel partners involved in cloud migrations already have the tools and expertise to handle the job. But if they want more help, they can call on Cloud Lift Services.

“Oracle has streamlined partner incentive programs … that include incentives for migrations,” a spokesperson told Channel Futures. “Oracle Cloud Lift Services is available to our customers even when they are engaged through our partners. This program will augment partner competency where appropriate to allow customers migrate their … applications seamlessly on to Oracle Cloud.”

Running VMware Carbon Black? Update to the New Version, Stat

Channel partners either running or managing the VMware Carbon Black Cloud Workload appliance need to upgrade to version 1.0.2.

That’s because a researcher found a serious vulnerability. If exploited, the flaw could let an attacker execute arbitrary code on a server.

As VMware itself notes in an advisory from last week, “A malicious actor with network access to the administrative interface of the VMware Carbon Black Cloud Workload appliance may be able to obtain a valid authentication token, granting access to the administration API of the appliance. Successful exploitation of this issue would result in the attacker being able to view and alter administrative configuration settings.”

Microsoft Azure Cloud Services Model

Microsoft has made its new Azure Cloud Services deployment model generally available.

Users – who can be Azure channel partners – now can increase regional resiliency. They also get capabilities including role-based access control, tags, policy, private links support and deployment templates.

The extended support version of Azure Cloud Services is a new Azure Resource Manager-based deployment model, Microsoft said. There’s also a classic version that remains usable for Azure Service Manager–based applications.

Cloud Professional Services = Money

Looks like channel partners doing the heavy lifting on cloud services have a wealth of opportunity in front of them.

Analyst firm MarketsandMarkets says the cloud professional services market will hit $37 billion by 2026, up from $14.2 billion last year. That represents a 17.2% compound annual growth rate.

Companies that represent this niche include Accenture, Rackspace, Capgemini, Atos, Wipro, Deloitte, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure — and the managed service providers, system integrators, consultants and resellers that work with them.

In other words, partners helping customers design, implement, manage and maintain their cloud deployments look positioned to rake in the dough. The cloud ecosystem is growing in complexity. And cloud partners who do more than save organizations money will be the big winners, per MarketsandMarkets. The entities that create delivery solutions “that add … value to the clients across business and technical operations of the enterprise” will outpace their peers, the research firm said.

Last year, North America dominated the global cloud professional services market, MarketsandMarkets said. That is due to the large number of technology-savvy end users who also stand out as early adopters. The United States and Canada together claim 47% of the world’s cloud professional services market, MarketsandMarkets said. The dominance ties to the adoption of SaaS and digital business strategies in the two countries, as well as the presence of companies such as Accenture, IBM and Deloitte.

Smaller partners can take part in the cloud professional services trend, too — and without having to invest too much into their businesses. That’s why more distributors and vendors have ramped up focus on cloud professional services. Some recent examples? CloudBlue snapped up Harmony Business Systems, which develops professional services automation software. D&H debuted its professional services division and Infoblox rolled out a professional services program for partners.