Computacenter execs: 'A lot of public cloud adoption has happened by accident'
The reseller and services giant reveals the reasoning behind its updated cloud strategy and hints at new partners
The choices in vendors, tools and features around the public cloud have resulted in a growing problem of complexity for customers, according to Computacenter.
The services giant last week launched a re-brand of its cloud strategy, explaining that the rationale for the move is based on the rapidly growing public cloud market and their experiences with overwhelmed customers.
"Our cloud and datacentre business is not new and we're not launching that today," explained Andreas Toeroek, director of business line enterprise at Computacenter, at a press briefing on the update.
"But what is indeed new is the way we take it to market and how we package it for our customers.
"[The complexity and number of options make it] increasingly difficult for our customers to pick the right vendor or technology for their specific requirement.
"So we decided that instead of having a segmented portfolio of solutions for niche problems, we come up with a consolidated go-to-market where we look at the overall holistic customer issue requirement."
Toroek added that despite the explosive growth of the public cloud space in recent years, hybrid cloud environments are here to stay, adding that customers tend to choose based on what's new rather than what purpose it serves their business.
"In the early days of cloud there was a myth that everything will go public cloud," he elaborated.
"Now we have a much more mature view of the cloud and we know that it will be multi hybrid for at least the next five to 10 years.
"A lot of the public cloud adoption has happened, If we're being honest, by accident.
"A lot of core business units discovered public cloud as a means to accelerate their digital initiatives.
"A good example is salesforce.com, where its sales unit sold the benefits of software-as-a-service solution.
"[Customers] just jumped on it without thinking of the integration, security implications, governance cost, and so on - they just took it.
"Now we know that public cloud needs to be looked at from different perspectives and ideas - we can't just let it happen."
Hyper(scaler) aware
Iain Mobberley, sales development director for platform and hybrid IT, added that Computacenter's updated strategy is to highlight its work with hyperscalers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, to enterprise clients.
"I think if you'd asked our customers 12 months ago about public cloud and where specifically Computacenter resides in that market, lots of them would say, ‘we didn't even know that you did public cloud or that you were interested in working with us in that space'," he elaborated.
"It wasn't that we weren't doing it - we were working with a small number of enterprise customers in that space - but I don't think we were synonymous with working with the hyperscalers, specifically, in trying to move that customers workloads there. And so we started this programme to try and change some of that."
Mobbeley added that customer appetite for public cloud provider services could see Computacenter soon partnering with Google Cloud in the UK, and has been fielding inquiries about Alibaba.
"Customers are working across the portfolio of all the hyperscalars, perhaps not so much Alibaba at the moment, but certainly with the three main ones," he said, referring to AWS, Azure and Google.
"We've seen a lot of penetration around the AWS and Azure space from our customers, Google less so but I'm sure that will come as well.
And we're seeing one or two customers saying ‘in our global presence, how are you going to help us in China?' and obviously, Alibaba has spun out of there.
"So we need to be cognizant and aware of what they're all doing, but remain focused.
"Because it's very difficult to build a set of services that are relevant to our customers - that we can hang our hat on and deliver in a very safe way because that's what our customers expect of us - and have that across all of the hyperscalers."
Computacenter's refreshed strategy ultimately came about because of a higher level of confidence in its cloud abilities, according to UK boss Neil Hall.
"We've worked with a smaller number of companies that work in the enterprise space, helping them adopt and managing the multi-cloud space," he told CRN.
"We've now got the confidence levels, the capability and credibility to go and help our customers solve particularly challenging problems - which on the surface might sound really easy in the way that some providers and vendors position it to the marketplace.
"We accept there's a lot of complexity, and we want to cut through that."