5 for 15: Mark Randall, Bulletproof chief customer officer
Develop the skills and partnerships that allow your business to support customers as they migrate different workloads to the Cloud. Customers need help in a variety of areas, including Cloud Strategy, Migration services, Managed Services and Support, DevOps and Agile enablement, APIs and Integration, Ecommerce and Big Data. This presents a significant opportunity for the channel with Cloud Services revenues typically exceeding Cloud infrastructure revenues by 5:1.
Key technology for 2015
From a Cloud perspective we are seeing huge growth in demand for our DevOps services, which goes far beyond infrastructure automation. Automated Testing, SCRUM coaching and Agile enablement are areas where we are seeing a particular spike in demand as customers seek a partner that can help transform and accelerate their Software Development processes. Another area of growing demand is Hybrid Cloud. This is particularly true with customers who are performing large scale migration/transformation projects. As the range of workloads proliferates beyond Web & Digital, we are seeing customers looking to lift and shift certain applications to our VMware Cloud, whilst others are re-architected for Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Key message to the channel in 2015
The accelerating rate of change and disruption in all industries is opening up new opportunities for the channel. Companies need to invest in new areas of technology to remain competitive, and this means significant growth in many segments of the IT industry.
Key warning to the channel for 2015
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Stay close to your customers, listen to them, and ensure you are delivering value. IT is rapidly shifting away from its traditional maintenance role and is instead becoming the catalyst for innovation across the business. This means more and more IT decisions are being taken by department leaders, so it’s important to nurture new relationships with your customers. Failure to do this and you could quickly lose customers in a rapidly changing industry.
Keys to Bulletproof’s success in 2015
Our channel partners have been, and will continue to be, one of the keys to our success. A significant proportion of our new customer engagements begin with partners and they are constantly challenging us to deliver on increasingly complicated client projects. In addition to our partners, our ability to support customers throughout their Cloud journey is key. We offer services from Consulting to Delivery, right through to Support, which is a competitive difference for the company. Our growing Professional Services business is also fueling our success. The Professional Services team delivers the expertise customers need to complete their projects and unlock the value of their Cloud investments.
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