CompTIA’s Cloud Community met this week at ChannelCon, and one of the highlights of the meeting was a presentation titled “Crowdsourcing Cloud Insights: The Past, The Present and the Future” led by the community’s chair Jason Bystrak, executive director for the Americas at Ingram Micro Cloud.
Bystrak first asked those in attendance, “How does cloud vendor acquisition affect your business negatively or positively?” Cloud community members answered that it’d led them to invest in IP and to look at product launches as born in cloud.
Bystrak asked, “What are we selling?” The room stated backup, file-sharing and business continuity, adding that the key to file sharing is mobile access, creating a rich, protective, manageable and secure environment in which to do so.
Asked if they can monetize helping customers determine policy, the answer from members seemed to be no; that at present it’s really a value-add.
Bystrak asked, “What cloud adaptations fail?” Ted Roller, owner of GetChanneled, pointed at centralized management of cloud solutions, adding customers are “just figuring out how to manage devices” now.
Asked by Bystrak, “What kind of tech investments are you making?” an attendee spoke on receiving $70,000 in workforce incentives from the state of Florida and using this to retrain engineers for cloud.
The investment the community identified as most essential is marketing. John Rice with Intermedia said, “Because of the way business here transformed, the most important thing is marketing. Sixty percent of top MSPs say the biggest thing on their mind right now is ‘How do I expand my customer base?’” Another Cloud Community member added, “Marketing starts right at the top and aligns with everything. I’d encourage you to start with the value proposition.”
Finally, asked “What does the cloud partner of the future look like?” Rice said, “What they’re going to be is grown-up MSPs. Much more vertical. They’re going to do a lot of consulting, and not for free.”
