Rising profits thanks to cloud services

Cost efficiency, the expansion of the portfolio without investment costs and a chance to deepen customer loyalty: Cloud computing offers IT service providers numerous advantages in the support of their customers' IT environments. This blog post shows how IT service providers can use cloud services to improve their position in the market.

Table of Contents

• How IT resellers benefit from cloud services
• 👍 Cost efficiency
• 👍 Maximum data protection
• 👍 Better customer relationship
• 👍 More market share
• 👍 Time saving
• 👍 Scalability
• Specialized IaaS partners provide functional cloud services
• Hyperscaler packages are often not suitable for SMEs
• Your company data is safe in Switzerland

Many Swiss IT resellers have included cloud services in their portfolio and work together with an IT infrastructure provider for this purpose. An external partner provides highly available, stable and scalable cloud services. With cloud services, a reseller can expand its offering quickly and easily without having to make large investments. 

In contrast to the operation of physical servers on site, cloud services do not require the installation of your own hardware. This means that cloud resellers do not have to carry out regular hardware inspections and permanently ensure ideal conditions for server rooms, such as ventilation or air conditioning.

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These five requirements should be met by your IT infrastructure in 2021
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How IT resellers benefit from cloud services

Especially when supporting the IT environments of SMEs and growing start-ups, the scalability and cost efficiency of cloud services is an important decision criterion when choosing the right cloud reseller, while at the same time the highest data protection standards must be met. Below is a brief summary of the biggest advantages of cloud services for IT resellers:

👍 Cost efficiency

Instead of stockpiling performance with their own bare metal server and having little room for expansion, cloud service resellers purchase customised services. Thanks to the purchase of cloud services, the portfolio can be expanded without large investment costs and the customer's change requests can be implemented within a very short time. Cloud services are often offered in an attractive pay-as-you-go payment model. Monthly billing according to effective use is easy on the budget of resellers and end customers at the same time. Many service providers - including us - also offer a reseller partner programme that ensures IT service providers an additional margin on recurring revenues.

👍 Maximum data protection

In the event of IT disasters such as cyber attacks, major fires or floods, end customers do not lose valuable data because it is stored externally.

👍 Better customer relationship

The reselling of cloud services ensures recurring revenues because the services are usually purchased on a monthly basis. In addition, customer loyalty is deepened because the reseller can offer a larger selection and design individual and scalable solutions in cooperation with the end customer.

👍 More market share

Depending on the customer's goals, budget and innovation potential, cloud resellers can also up-sell or cross-sell and thus, in the best case, take market share from the competition.

👍 Time saving

With the purchase of cloud services, as mentioned above, there is no need to set up your own hardware. The IT service provider is therefore no longer responsible for regular hardware revisions and permanently ensuring the ideal conditions for server rooms. The time-consuming and cost-intensive recruitment of cloud experts is also eliminated, allowing resellers to invest more time and energy in finding talent in other areas. Thanks to the collaboration with a cloud service provider, an increase in efficiency is achieved by eliminating waiting or delivery times and allowing employees to provision servers at any time of the day or night.

👍 Scalability

Growing businesses depend on being able to expand their IT environment within a very short time. Reasons for this can be new customers, additional projects or the hiring of new team members. Cloud services enable IT service providers to expand their customers' infrastructure at the click of a mouse and to implement changes flexibly.

The majority of IT resellers in Switzerland have recognized the opportunities of cloud service reselling and are aware of the importance of the new strategy in supporting SMEs and growing companies. However, resellers often lack the financial or human resources to set up their own cloud infrastructure or professional cloud services. 

Specialized IaaS partners provide functional cloud services

The solution could be to work with an external IT infrastructure provider: An IaaS partner specializing in cloud computing provides highly available, stable and scalable cloud services. This provides end customers with a functional IT environment for their daily work. Last but not least, cloud service integrators who know that their infrastructure is in good hands can concentrate more on their core business again: customer support and the acquisition of new customers.

Hyperscaler packages are often not suitable for SMEs

How do IT service providers find the right cloud services provider for a long-term reseller partnership? Well-known names such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services often offer attractive pricing models. However, these predefined packages of hyperscalers rarely meet all the requirements of growing SMEs and are therefore not the right cloud partner for Swiss system integrators, whose target group usually consists largely of small or medium-sized companies. 

The external cloud partner should know the Swiss SME landscape so that suitable cloud concepts can be developed for the end customers in collaboration with the IT service provider. Only in this way are resellers able to offer customized IT environments for companies of all sizes.

Your company data is safe in Switzerland

The company location also plays an important role in choosing the right IaaS provider. In times of data leaks and hacker attacks, most companies and their end customers probably want to know where their data is stored. Most hyperscalers such as Amazon or Microsoft have their headquarters in the USA, where access to company data is practiced without judicial control by means of the Patriot Act. In Switzerland, on the other hand, this is not permitted.