Abiquo Launches Cloud Accelerator Program with MSPExcellence

A few weeks ago we launched the Cloud Accelerator Program with MSPExcellence to educate MSPs and Hosting Providers on how to successfully provide Cloud Services and offer a go-to-market solution for their offerings.  

The Cloud Accelerator Program kicks off with a series of educational “Manage the Cloud for Success” webinars to introduce interested MSP partners to the market opportunity, the enabling technology, and the elements of the go-to-market plan. The first webinar will be held on March 17, 2011, at 1pm EST, and will cover five critical success factors for converging cloud and managed services, including creating a formal strategic plan, developing a profitable business model, building an effective marketing machine, managing a predictable sales process and continuously measuring success. The webinar is being presented by MSPAlliance and MSPexcellence. Registration is now closed, sorry.

Check back here after the webinar. We’ll summarize the key questions MSP’s said they’re facing and share some thoughts on how to address those issues.

Should Managed Service Providers repurpose their internal software or partner with a purpose-built cloud management solution?

The biggest hype in 2010 was all about Cloud computing, leading some Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to capitalize on this by repackaging their current toolsets as cloud offerings. However, some analysts are already starting to see problems ahead for both these solutions and the companies using them.

The issue is that Cloud computing is as much a business model as it is a technology, and if the technology used to drive cloud computing cannot support this new business model, the initiative will not succeed. In a recent blog post, James Staten of Forrester predicted that many enterprise internal cloud deployments will fail in because organizations lack the experience to understand that Cloud computing technology needs to reinforce the business model, and should be purpose built, and not just an adaptation.

We spend a lot of time talking to our customers about their cloud deployments, and they’re reporting that the success of their cloud deployments can be attributed to their internal strategy and policy-based automation and management of their clouds. They also said that defined user roles and multi-tenancy were key to providing cloud services successfully and securely. This sentiment matches what Gartner analyst Tom Bittman recently reported as key ingredients of a successful cloud deployment. Bittman identified 3 keys to successful cloud deployment: 

1. 1.      Policy-based cloud management
2. 2.      Separately configurable Security Policy management
3. 3.      Defined user roles with multi-tenant “trust-zones”

James Staten reiterates that Successful private Cloud deployments depend on service planning, business policy based management, and defined user roles.

Industry expert David Linthicum noted 3 reasons Clouds fail: no governance, no performance modelling, and no talent. In the article, Linthicum states that enterprises must build a governance and management strategy that will be reinforced by the technology.

While re-purposing software may be easy, it is difficult to maintain long-term. The standard development cycle involves 20% code development and 80% support and improvements to that code. For MSPs, the amount of resources their customers expect them to spend on supporting code means less resources spent on providing services.

Likewise, enterprises will expect that their MSP can provide prompt bug fixes and a user-friendly self service portal. The MSP’s internal software may or may not be able to handle this demand.

A more sustainable option is to use software that was designed to deliver the business model. Doing so empowers MSPs to provide cloud services out of the gate, rather than spending time developing and supporting software – after all, an MSP’s core competency is providing services, not software.