The Cloud + Your Clients' Business: What MSPs Need To Know In 2017

By Kirill Bensonoff, Founder of Unigma 

If it feels like everybody is talking about cloud, it’s not your imagination. Cloud is growing at 19.4 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and shows great promise for 2017. With this kind of growth, what changes should MSPs expect to see in their clients’ business use of cloud in 2017? 

• IT Skill Sets Will Undergo A Shift To Cloud

The demand for people with cloud expertise is increasing as more companies adopt clout. To respond to this, more IT departments will be making cloud-focused training a priority. Some of the training will focus on hosted databases, infrastructure as a service, and cloud security. Companies will also look for employees or resources (and in your case, that could mean members among their MSP teams) that have experience with the major cloud platforms such as Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web services. 

• We Will Slowly Move Toward Heuristic Automation

IT automation will slowly transition from traditional scripting to defined workloads for tasks, eventually arriving at heuristic automation. “Start down the heuristic path by appointing an automation leader in IT, automating script discovery and rewarding administrators for building resilient, structured scripts,” writes TechTarget’s Meredith Courtemanche. 

• Analytics Will Grow For IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) has already started generating vast quantities of data which is dumped into cloud storage. The next step is to improve our analysis of this data. Unfortunately, IoT data is often stored across disparate systems, making it difficult to access. In order to resolve this issue, analytics software needs to be able to connect to these databases and combine data from disparate sources. Once the data is properly mined, visualization tools can be used to help businesses make better decisions. 

• Software Governance Will Become Easier

In the past, IT departments had to tightly control what software was installed on computers to manage licensing, limit the risk of malware, and control data security. With cloud, IT no longer has to worry about maintaining software installations for cloud applications. Instead, IT can monitor usage and make sure the correct users get the features they need. This freedom gives IT more control over user permissions, authentication, and overall data security. As a result, IT has new opportunities to improve business and employees have more options in software. 

• Legacy Apps Will Continue To Give Way To Reduced Costs And Improved Agility

Many enterprises are being held back by on-premise legacy applications that are expensive to maintain. As these workflows are migrated to cloud, it will reduce costs and improve business agility. SaaS offers a specialized approach that allows businesses to avoid massive, monolith programs and replace them with flexible design. Cloud instead offers:

• increased flexibility
• better scaling
• reduced IT time for hardware and software upgrades 

• IT Will Shift To New Types Of Software Deployment

While traditional IT departments have had to focus on maintaining and updating software and hardware, their focus with cloud will deal with new software deployments within the cloud environment. These complex deployments allow IT to show off their subject matter expertise and help manage change for the organization.

• Cloud Adoption Will Improve Customer Satisfaction

Since companies can reduce costs, become more efficient, and scale more easily with cloud, customer satisfaction to becoming more of a focus. Vendors know a client can leave anytime, so they’re making greater efforts to build long-term success for their customers so they will stay. This means they are providing better customer support and training to help customers to adapt to their cloud environment more easily. This allows for longer relationships and happy customers. 

Cloud is redefining software for many businesses while freeing up time for IT to focus more on business. MSPs who understand the cloud can serve as outsources experts for companies that need personnel who the necessary skills to make the most of cloud in 2017. 

For additional tips — such as how channel partners can increase revenue with IaaS clouds — download Kirill Bensonoff’s new eBook.

Kirill Bensonoff is a seasoned entrepreneur and the founder of Unigma, a unified cloud management platform. Unigma has been featured in a number of publications, and Kirill blogs regularly about cloud, tech and growing your managed services business. He can be reached at kirill@unigma.com.