There’s no doubt that, to progress their digital transformation, enterprises are going to need to deploy multi-cloud environments. According to research by Dell EMC, companies that aggressively adopt hybrid cloud are three times more likely than non-adopters to be approaching their digital business and infrastructure readiness goals.
This is because there’s no single cloud that can do everything perfectly. Ultimately, cloud computing is only a means to an end. It’s a way of delivering apps and information into the hands of users, irrespective of device, and unlock the opportunities of digitisation. However, the result is that a single enterprise can find itself with a mash of different environments, often deployed by different business units, for a variety of purposes. As these environments have matured, IT is left with the headache of trying to have a single point of view to manage them effectively, ensure they meet the organization’s requirements, and get the most out of their cloud investments.
They have a long way to go. According to IDC, less than 10% of European organisations have taken sufficient steps toward establishing a proper multi cloud strategy. That doesn’t mean, however, that they don’t have multiple cloud environments running, as well as legacy data centres or applications they need to modernise for the digital era. It means that it might not be part of a cohesive strategy or might not have the operational standardisation critical to having an agile, scalable cloud infrastructure.
This is made more complicated by the fact that enterprises are also struggling to find enough people that can actually do the work, that can help propel them on their digital transformation journey, is extremely limited. Everyone wants talent with the knowledge and ability to run cloud environments properly. The result is hiring takes time and can be expensive.
It all adds up to huge challenge, but also a huge opportunity – especially for partners delivering business IT to customers. As Carl Brooks, analyst for service providers, managed services and hosting at 451 Research says “Service provider partners are emerging as the most important link between enterprises and their desired cloud infrastructure vendors. They provide the expertise, work and experience necessary to move at the pace today’s market demands. For vendors, enabling partners to make more money incents them to sell more software; it’s becoming a vital route to market for cloud platforms to as broad a base as possible.”
However, partners themselves need to have enough knowledge to select the right cloud environments for their customers’ business needs. That means working with vendors to develop services and solutions that meet customer requirements.
That’s why we recently announced the expansion of the VMware Cloud Provider Platform, to help our partners capture the transition to multi-cloud and deliver new, differentiated services to their customers, all underpinned by our cloud infrastructure.
In other words, to monetise the cloud.
These latest innovations to the platform enable partners to both modernize VMware-based clouds and expand multi-cloud managed services. We also announced the expansion of new and enhanced services on VMware Cloud on AWS. Delivered, sold, and supported by our partner community, VMware Cloud on AWS brings VMware’s enterprise-class Software-Defined Data Center software to the AWS Cloud, enabling customers to run production applications across VMware vSphere-based hybrid cloud environments, with optimised access to the breadth and depth of AWS services and robust disaster protection.
These latest changes are driven by our ongoing dialogue and collaboration with our partner community. Partners are critical for VMware’s ongoing success – they are our link to the customer, helping us understand what enterprises need to navigate their own transformation and capitalise on the new opportunities presented by the digital era. That’s why we’ve worked with them to support the services their customers want, as you can see:
“Businesses of all sizes are under pressure to deliver superior customer experiences based on agile IT by making a major shift into a combination of managed private and public clouds. But moving existing applications, delivering new applications and features, and optimizing operations in the cloud can be complex,” said Peter FitzGibbon, vice president and general manager of the VMware practice at Rackspace. “Rackspace is partnering with VMware to help our mutual customers navigate the challenges and maximize the value of implementing a multi-cloud strategy delivered as a service. VMware continues to deliver new innovations that enable us to combine new and differentiated managed cloud offerings with our Fanatical Experience and deliver strategic flexibility, optimal economics and easier migration to our customers.”
Choosing the right infrastructure to support an organization’s digital ambitions is complicated – there’s no silver bullet, and there isn’t the option to wait for one. As customers wake up to what a cohesive, strategic multi-cloud approach means, there is a major opportunity for partners to monetise the cloud by being the key to unlocking new opportunities.
By Louise Ostrom, VP Network and Security EMEA, VMware
