Service Providers: Telltale Signs It’s Time to Break Up with Your Current Cloud Management Solution
How do you effectively manage cloud environments for multiple customers with many services, at scale? Some service providers develop custom consoles to provide services to their customers, while others license a commercial and brandable solution. Just a few years ago, custom development was the only option for service providers to tackle cloud service management challenges such as customer billing and invoicing, visibility across all customers, and Reserved Instance management. Today, both commercial and open source solutions are available to support service providers’ internal and external business needs. But, is your current solution cutting it? Does it continue to meet your business requirements as your customers and business grow? Are you confident in the long-term future and viability of your current commercial solution?
Key focus areas when evaluating your cloud management tool
In light of market shifts and acquisitions, many service providers are considering making a change when it comes to their cloud management solution. If you are in the process of evaluating, or re-evaluating, your cloud management tool, here are key areas you should focus on:
- Support for all major public clouds. Cloud service providers are not one-size-fits-all, so end users increasingly rely on a mix of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings — such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform. In fact, a recent study found 82% of enterprises use a multi-cloud strategy1. Does your current solution fully support multiple public cloud platforms, and will it continue to? Be sure your current solution is not biased to one provider, and that strong relationships are maintained across the three major public cloud providers.
- World-class support tailored for partners. These public cloud providers aren’t slowing their pace of rolling out new features. WIll your current solution be able to keep up? What’s the response when something stops working or is no longer playing nice? You can’t afford to have your business processes come to a screeching halt. You need your current solution to be ahead of the game so that when new features and updates are released by these providers, it’s armed and ready.
- Long-term commitment to the space. Switching cloud management providers is hard, so you want to pick one that will be around for the long haul. Is your provider a stable company with a sustainable business model? Do they have a proven track record and strong customer and partner base? Consider asking for references — if possible, an industry peer that is comparable in size, and who experienced similar cloud management challenges. Lastly, will the solution remain a standalone product, or will it become part of a larger suite of products with cloud management no longer the core focus?
If any of these questions make you doubt your current partnership, or if you have concerns regarding the future of your current solution, it may be time to start looking at what else is out there.
We’ve designed the Cloud Business Accelerator Program to enable service providers to optimize and manage cloud infrastructure and costs across their customers, while maximizing margins by up to 40% and delivering value-added services. We take a high-touch approach to working with our partners to help them offer profitable, differentiated cloud services with a repeatable go-to-market model and proven runbooks.
The program is based on the CloudHealth Partner Console, which provides an automated, policy-driven approach to cloud management, and also includes Cloud Business Accelerator Services, such as:
- Simplified bill splitting and automated provisioning of branded client statements.
- Analyzing, purchasing, managing, and automatically rebalancing AWS Reserved Instances to reduce costs by up to 85%.
- Providing customized data center migration assessments to AWS or Azure.
- Automatically generating executive dashboards to highlight cost savings, cloud governance, and potential security risks.
- Running performance reports and rightsizing recommendations.
- Consolidating, optimizing, and governing infrastructure and costs across your client base and multiple clouds in a single console.
- Managing customer accounts programmatically with open APIs.
The CloudHealth service provider console is specifically designed to support and accelerate your cloud business. Our top priority is to help you grow your cloud business and drive customer success.
So, put the power of the industry’s most advanced cloud management platform to work. Get armed with the unique tools and training you need to build a successful business and compelling value proposition.
1Source: Forbes. “Typical Enterprise Uses Six Cloud Computing Services, Survey Shows.” February 9, 2016.
Originally published at www.cloudhealthtech.com.
