The ICT industry is changing rapidly and the market is becoming more competitive every day. Faced with this, cloud solutions and pay-as-you-go services are gaining popularity by better adapting to new business needs.
Large companies such as IBM or Huawei are developing their Cloud Computing solutions, however, there is still some reluctance on the part of companies in acquiring these services.
By 2020, 95% of the companies will work with Cloud Computing
There is no doubt that the market is becoming more competitive, and in particular the ICT sector has undergone a major transformation in recent years. In addition, with the expansion of technology to all kinds of fields, the old software license-based business models are becoming obsolete, driving cloud computing and pay-as-you-go.
The use of tools controlling processes and monitoring business activities under better management becomes completely necessary to survive the competition. In this context, the cloud and pay-as-you-go have continued to grow, especially% in 2015, with an increase of 40 in the overall number, according to Synergy Research Group. In addition, it is estimated that, by 2020, 95% of the companies will work under this modality.
Fernando Rumbero, Director of SaaS Application Sales at Oracle Ibérica, states that “pay-as-you-go is gaining ground in a dizzying way in recent years and our figures show this. In the specific case of SaaS, the company has seen its subscription revenue grow by 68%, totaling $3.4 billion. By adding PaaS and IaaS, the cloud subscription set grew by 60% to $4.6 billion in annual revenue.”
In addition, it presents a high level of security and availability thanks to its daily support and immediate updates, the level of security and availability updates are immediate and support is always up to date, allowing the company to focus all your attention on the business, raising availability and with high levels of data security, the head of Oracle Ibérica points out.
Lorena Perochon, SaaS manager at IBM Spain, Portugal, Greece and Israel, agrees on the diagnosis. “We are aware that the way technology is consumed has changed and it is the end customers who demand new formats that allow them to access innovative solutions. The growth of the SaaS model is a priority for us and we live in good times for companies that want to go far in their digital transformation, as they must make strategic decisions regarding three key areas of their technological architecture: data platform, artificial intelligence platform and cloud platform, where all our SaaS proposal lies.”
Perochon argues that this new model offers a lot of benefits to companies that pay for such services, since, among other things, they involve less initial investment, which reduces risk and barriers to entry.
In addition, Perochon believes that “they are all advantages, both for the end customer and for our business partners, because the old licensing model did not allow the flexibility and technological evolution provided by a SaaS model”.
In addition, Rumbero emphasizes that companies welcome paying only for what they use. It is a change of concept that has been well accepted by organizations, who look freer to choose the applications or vendor that best suits their needs.
Today there is resistance to selling Cloud
However, adapting to changes has not been an easy task. “It’s taken time, like all the big technological transitions. The big changes mean thinking differently, reorganizing internally and overcoming cultural barriers, but it has certainly been worth it. In a progressive and unstoppable way, technology is driving new business models, which break sectoral boundaries and bring new competitors and new services to emerge with new advantages. In the near future we will see how more and more businesses incorporate this type of applications for its myriad advantages, both for them and for the end user”, notes Perochon.
In fact, today there is a resistance to selling cloud, according to a study by Context World, in which more than 6000 European resellers have participated, which, among them, there is a high percentage that show no interest in selling cloud.
About a third of European distributors, with the UK being the most noteworthy, are not interested in selling cloud. Among those, the most popular solution is cloud backup, especially in the UK and Germany, thanks to the security it shows. Following this is cloud storage, which is most interested in France and Germany.
But why this disinterest? According to the study, they are not seeing customer demand in the first place, and this is added to questions about safety and complexity.
In this scenario, a company before marketing a cloud offering has to consider whether it is really ready to do so. To do this, the company needs to create and protect its intellectual property, so that it grows profitability, process demand in an efficient way, have the right equipment, forming it and accompanying it throughout the transition to cloud computing, increase the customer loyalty by managing their lifecycle.
Examples of success despite the difficulties is Salesforce, with customers well aware of the benefits since the pay-as-you-go model arrived. Although when it comes to implementing a new technology, it is not uncommon for there to be resistance to change in the first instance, in 2010 almost all (94%) of the customers surveyed were satisfied.
As a result, there are internal modifications to software vendors: “Our sales force is logically evolving, as we move from a product sales model to a service model. Therefore, we have to interpret in a different way all interactions with customers, starting in the information process, before the customer makes a purchase decision, until after-sales service. One of our employees’ missions in this new environment is to accompany our customers to get the most out of their cloud subscriptions. In this sense, we are much closer to business departments, as we need to clearly understand what their needs and priorities are to provide the most appropriate solutions,” says Oracle Iberica manager.
Companies are reluctant to use this business service
PHC Software, a company focused on business management software, agrees that the cloud market is not currently fully developed.
“We already have some customers who are doing it, but this is just getting started. Businesses are starting to get interested, but they’re reluctant to bring business management to the cloud. Although the cloud is the future, there is still uncertainty.” Hugo Ferreira, international business director, said.
In addition, they are looking for 10 new partners that can bring value to their channel, with differentiating models when implementing their solutions. The company, with a turnover of 10.4 million euros, is trying to enter smaller companies, even though so far its portfolio has been aimed at the medium-large company.
Specifically, PHC Software offers Drive FX, ready to take to private cloud. The company’s solutions bring together 14,000 customers from 30,000 companies.
Thanks to this model, PHC Software revitalized its proposal earlier this year with a new look. “We were looking to unify all our brands and adapt the image to our positioning to support companies to achieve excellence”, emphasizes Hugo Ferreira. “A recruitment that will pay off in the medium long term because it is a training job that needs time.”
IBM focuses on Cloud solutions
IBM, for its part, for the past four years has been trying to modify its ecosystem. So, the business strategy was changed to a much more innovative one. As a result, the company’s Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) have gone from generating 9.8 million euros to 20.1 million euros in Spain, from 100 to 800 CSPs.
In addition, improvements were made in different areas of the IBM Business Partners program, in order to accelerate the ecosystem and give great flexibility to the company’s partners, so that they could develop different business models.
IBM focuses on independent software vendors (ISVs), offering Ready for IBM Cloud validation, to power their cloud solutions on the Bluemix platform.
Another part of this program is the development of integrated solutions, thanks to the presentation of the Embedded Solutions Agreement model. With it, Business Partners can access and merge IBM products and services with their products and services in a way that quickly encourages the creation of innovative solutions at more competitive prices.
There has also been an improvement in incentives, rewarding each partner based on the type of solutions and opportunities it generates, its area or autonomous marketing.
In addition, IBM thanks to IBM Express Start leans toward simplified product distribution. Thus, the company has streamlined the authorization process to new Business Partners.
Huawei shows its industry news
Recently the Huawei Connect was held, the event where the company shows its new products hardware, software, data, connection, architecture, cloud computing… Highlighting the latter, the company announced its latest solution for the digital development of companies.
Joy Huang, vice president of Huawei’s IT product line, said that “Huawei Cloud is committed to fostering a smart world through continuous innovations in technology and capabilities at Huawei Cloud so that its customers have no problems in their digital transformation.”
For starters, it showed Huawei Cloud, which merges with platform services, uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) in activities such as image tagging, graphical reconstruction, audits, optical character recognition (OCR), packaging Smart…
It has also included distributed database services on the platform, including the Online Transaction Processing Law (OLTP) Distributed Corporate Database, the Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) LibrA Distributed Enterprise Data Store (OLAP) , and mySQL’s Taurus distributed database. In addition, it integrates with Huawei Devcloud, the company’s software that enables tools, services and processing capabilities in Huawei Cloud.
It also introduced Atlas, the next-generation cloud smart hardware. The platform, based on Huawei’s servers, FusionServer G-series – which concentrates resources such as GPU, HDD and SDD by using technologies such as heterogeneous resource pooling and intelligent orchestration – is geared towards the public cloud Artificial Intelligence (AI) and High Performance Computing (HPC). In addition, with FusionServer G-series, hardware resources are provided on demand so that you can meet those needs that have specific service models.
Another standout product is the Huawei Cloud Internet of Things, a complete platform that includes SIM card management, enabling applications with secure connection features, cross-sector ecosystem, and device management integration .
The hybrid cloud computing solution shown was fusionBridge, with an Injection Cascading architecture – used to deploy the homogeneous or heterogeneous cloud – and based on the Cloud OpenStack platform.
As for the public cloud, Huawei introduced FusionCloud Stack, aimed at corporate data centers. This solution the company tries to have a consistent user experience, with zero local maintenance, low latency, and high data control, so that security is complete.
Finally, the FusionBridge solution is the novelty that Huawei has designed for the hybrid cloud. That solution builds on the OpenStack Cloud platform and features an Injection Cascading architecture that is used to deploy a homogeneous or heterogeneous hybrid cloud.
