Laliwala IT Services

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Monday, May 20, 2013

Google, Zoho and Microsoft - Cloud App

Office Apps on the Cloud 

Many partners who took the CRN Cloud Adoption Survey feel that the easiest public cloud computing service to offer through channels is migrating on-premise office applications to the cloud. Google, Zoho and Microsoft have more than 2,000 partners in the country selling their office applications on the cloud. Commission range from 12-19 percent annually on new subscriptions and 6-10 percent for existing customers. Ever since Microsoft announced the Office 365 Open program, the business model of billing through a distributor, flexible pricing and payment terms for customers, things have become easier for partners. Services opportunities: Migration per user from on-premise is expected to fetch a one-time fee of Rs 500-1,000.

UC on the cloud

A growing opportunity is emerging with UC off the cloud, and apart from the big players, many niche players have emerged. While Microsoft offers Lync as an added feature with Office 365, competition is coming from Cisco, Digium and Avaya which have announced hosted UC offerings. Other players such as Super Receptionist, Knowlarity, Twilio and Plivo allow SIs to offer telephony solutions off the net. Services opportunities: There are huge opportunities for SIs to replace traditional PBX with public telephony solutions. Cisco estimates services revenue to be almost equal to the first year’s annual hosting costs.  

 Storage/Backup/DR

While primary storage is still not considered suitable for movement to a public cloud because of latency issues, content which is often served over the net is fast moving to a public cloud. Amazon’s public storage service S3 is being used by Web application owners to host static content. Akamai and Amazon CloudFront have emerged for providing caching content. Meanwhile, secondary storage, backup and archival are emerging as the hottest opportunities with almost two dozen vendors emerging. Many channel partners have also set up their own white-labeled public cloud practices. For instance, Sanovi Technologies has started offering solutions of public clouds, while Dropbox recently announced a corporate plan. For archival, Amazon has announced Glaciers, which offers 1 TB of archival for as low as $10. Services opportunities: Apart from migration, channels can play a services role in consulting, integration and maintenance.  

 Business Applications

Salesforce.com was the pioneer in moving CRM to the cloud. Today, Microsoft is offering Microsoft Dynamics online, while SAP has announced multiple partnerships to offer various SAP applications on the cloud. One of the biggest challenges so far has been the massive customizations which business applications require while being hosted off a public cloud. Vendors such as TCS have found solutions to sell hosted ERP in a consultative model. While Tally has stayed away from hosted models of its ERP solution, a number of Tally partners have set up cloud-enabled models around Tally. Services opportunities: Services opportunities remain more or less the same as in the case of on-premise models with consulting, integration, training and customization.              



IT Management

Almost all vendors in the IMS tool space have announced cloud initiatives. While Kaseya has had a beta version for long, Zoho and Sapphire have a hosted model. However, partners expect Microsoft with Windows Intune to provide the biggest surprise because 93 percent of Indian SMBs run mostly Windows-based infrastructure. Services opportunities: Automated Managed Services are emerging as the future for IMS, hence partners are expected to offer cloud-based IMS-as-a-service assurance rather than as a value addition.                 

Infrastructure & Platform

Globally, the most public cloud services revenue is around PaaS and IaaS. In 2013, Microsoft, Amazon and Google are expected to see revenue in excess of a billion dollars each. However in India few channel partners have started offering services around these platforms, one reason being that migrating on-premise applications to these platforms requires skill-sets which not all partners possess. However, with Microsoft and Amazon investing in training and support, analysts expect more partners to venture into offering solutions on top of an Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, Red Hat OpenShift or Google AppEngine. Services opportunities: Amazon estimates that resellers can make services revenue that is up to $2 for every dollar spent on hosting charges for the first year, apart from recurring commissions.    

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