PARTNERS ’ PERSPECTIVE
Is mainstream public cloud always the right solution for channel partners ?
Tim Whiteley , Co-Founder Inevidesk
Blind trust in big technology solutions is an attitude that can seriously undermine an enterprise and relations with reseller partners . As well as junking the cloud , the customer is also likely to junk the partner that led them there and such an outcome is disappointing , explains Tim Whiteley , Co-Founder Inevidesk .
As almost every organisation is well embedded in the Microsoft environment , and Azure is generally the obvious solution to consider for cloud-based server and VDI resources . In many cases , other options will not even be considered as the Microsoft mindset tends to rule and , of course , Azure is a key product for many channel partners .
At first glance this seems like the sensible choice , that is keep everything within the Microsoft environment , take advantage of dynamic scaling , and only pay for what you use . This is the fundamental promise of cloud computing and Microsoft has positioned Azure to reap that demand . The scalability of VDI is appealing in today ’ s constantly changing and challenging world .
But do not be too quick to go down the public cloud route unless you have ensured that the service will be fit for purpose . An inappropriate solution can seriously upend a customer relationship . There are increasing
Enterprises need to look for channel partners with wide industry-specific experience , who have a genuine array of options . numbers of organisations who are now migrating away from the public cloud , due to costs coming in much higher than forecasted and disappointing performance . It is not always the right fit .
Overprovisioning happens a lot , customers are promised the benefits of hosted VDI and Infrastructure as a Service , IaaS services but end up underspecifying and overprovisioning to try and meet a realistic budget . This then results in unanticipated overspending as underappreciated usage drives up monthly cost , whilst at the same time generating significant underperformance through budget squeezing under specification .
This is particularly prominent in sectors requiring large computing resources , frequent data churn and longer working hours than the average working day . Dynamic usage works out to be expensive .
Making matters worse , further consequences can include losing access to resources due to cross-customer overprovisioning and missing hours or days of work . Crazy as it seems , the large public cloud vendors can , and do , run out of resources .
The impact of unanticipated high costs , lower performance and downtime is a recipe for disaster , with the result often requiring migration to another solution , even regressing back to legacy on-premises infrastructure , reverting to the familiar and comfortable . Migrations are expensive
24 www . intelligenttechchannels . com