Article Prepare for the New Buyer in Managed Services

Customer demands and expectations are fundamentally changing. In fact, Gartner says it is one of the six forces that will have a significant impact on how tech companies and service providers operate their businesses in the coming years.

Customers want to introduce new products, explore new markets, expand their reach ever faster, cheaper and with higher mobility and agility. As a service provider, how can you live up to the requirements of this ‘new buyer’? Expand your own data centre or move to a (hybrid) cloud model?

Data centre expansion

Data centre expansion can still be an attractive idea for service providers. In a private data centre, you own all the iron yourself and you are in full control to standardize infrastructure, simplify services and operations, protect sensitive data exactly as you wish.

However, having all workloads in a physical data centre is hardly realistic nowadays and certainly not sustainable for the future. It is inevitable that you will have customers who want to work in the cloud or that you will want to integrate new applications that are in the cloud yourself.

Two business drivers for cloud

To remain successful, service providers must adapt to how customers want to buy IT services today. More and more, this will be in the cloud. Often there are two business drivers that create this urgency: a customer with clear ambitions to work in the cloud, or someone who needs a short time-to-market and therefore a fast implementation. In both cases, the solution is found in the cloud.

New buyers and buying conditions

More and more, service providers will face this new type of buyer. A buyer who is driven by business rather than technology and focuses on automation and online interactions to optimize and compete more successfully. This also changes your role as a service provider and impacts several areas:

• Business: a different (hybrid) business model, shifting from service to value delivery.
• Financial: budgets, investments, amortization of current assets to transform healthily.
• Operational: new operational and management processes and procedures to follow.
• Technological: new skills and new roles for your team to embrace new technology.

No matter how you look at it, cloud is the new way forward for future growth. No matter how the cloud is disruptive to how you may have been working for decades, it also offers many new opportunities. To name a few: it simplifies IT management and operations, reduces costs, enhances productivity and frees up time and valuable people for new roles.

Plan and prepare your cloud strategy

The urgency to transform is there, but it doesn’t have to come in one big bang. Start planning now and be ready when your business driver arises.

• Start educating yourself and your team on cloud, specifically on what your business requires.
• Consult with cloud and data centre transformation specialists to discuss your needs and plans.
• Do it step by step in hybrid cloud: move some workloads, one customer, launch a new service.
• Consider partnerships to meet a broader variety of vertical market requirements.

Need help?

At Insight, we help service providers realize their business ambitions in a multi-cloud world. As a multi-vendor software licensing, workload, and cloud platform specialist, we can guide you through all stages of your strategic cloud journey. No matter where you are in your journey, we help you to find new ways forward and accelerate your business. Contact one of our cloud specialists for a talk.

Further reading?

Follow our blogs on cloud adoption or read our client stories to find out what others say.