Should Integrators Embrace Cloud Computing?

Among the many questions to consider: Moving to the cloud means recurring business, but since you are outsourcing most of the maintenance work, it won’t be as profitable. Read on for more details.

As a consultant/business partner, I’m always looking out for new opportunities and analyzing market trends. Cloud computing — the notion that you can use computing power in the data center rather than purchasing your own hardware and software and doing it all in-house — has captured a lot of imaginations.

The question we’re going to ask in this article is, “as a vendor or service provider, is selling services through the cloud a good business?”

Cloud vs. In-House

Cloud computing has become an additional service offering from system integrators. However, most integrators make their money from implementation and service maintenance. With cloud computing, they will be passing part of their work to data centers to manage.

One way to handle cloud computing involves taking a blended approach. As a business partner in a system integrator, we will try to encourage our customers to adopt cloud computing, while having an on-premise system for faster connections for the users. This would give us a balance of the pros and cons provided by cloud computing and in-house servers.

The following table lists the pros and cons of cloud vs. in-house computing from a system integrator’s point of view, and it suggests ways we can blend the two in our businesses:

Read the rest at Enterprise Networking Planet.