Scalability, 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 when it comes to looking after their customers' IT infrastructure. Here you can find out how to fully exploit the potential of the cloud.
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Cloud services provide IT service providers with more scope for the rapid expansion of websites, company blogs or online shops when supporting SMEs and growing businesses - and without investment costs. The monthly billing also saves the reseller's and end customer's budget at the same time.
In this blog post, we show how IT service providers can better serve their customers and increase cost efficiency by sourcing cloud services from a reliable partner and what to consider when choosing an external cloud provider.
Many 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. A value-added reseller (VAR) or system integrator can expand its offering quickly and easily with cloud services without having to make large investments.
In contrast to the operation of physical servers on site, cloud services do not require the construction of their own hardware. Regular hardware revisions and permanently ensuring the ideal conditions for server rooms such as ventilation or air conditioning are therefore no longer necessary.
Cost efficiency is still one of the most important sales arguments, not only when it comes to looking after the IT infrastructure of SMEs and growing start-ups, while at the same time - regardless of the size of the company - the highest standards of stability and security must be met. We have summarised the most important advantages of cloud services for IT resellers for you:
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 enables scalability if required and at the same time protects the budget of resellers and end customers. Many service providers also offer a reseller partner programme that ensures IT service providers an additional margin on recurring revenues.
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. In times of data leaks and increasingly perfidious 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 practised by means of the Patriot Act without judicial control. In Switzerland, on the other hand, this is not allowed. If sensitive customer and company data is stored in ISO-certified data centres in Switzerland, the data is protected in the best possible way against unauthorised access and theft.
The resale 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 wider choice and design individual solutions in cooperation with the end customer. 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 over market share from the competition.
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 cooperation with a cloud service provider, an increase in efficiency is achieved by no longer having to wait or wait for delivery, and employees can provision the servers at any time of the day or night.
Growing businesses depend on being able to expand their IT environment within a very short time. This can be due to new customers, additional projects or the hiring of new team members. Cloud services enable resellers to expand their customers' infrastructure at the click of a mouse and to implement changes flexibly.
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Recommended: Cloud Hosting Guide - Decision support for the step into the cloud
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The majority of IT service providers in Switzerland have recognised the opportunities of cloud services 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. The solution to this could be to work with an external IT infrastructure provider.
An IaaS partner specialised 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 their infrastructure is in good hands can concentrate more on their core business again: customer care as well as the acquisition of new customers.
How do IT service providers find the right cloud service provider? 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 thus not the right cloud seller or partner for Swiss cloud system integrators, whose target group usually consists mostly of small or medium-sized companies. When choosing a cloud service provider, it is essential that the solutions are scalable and flexible.
Furthermore, the external cloud partner should know the Swiss SME landscape so that suitable cloud concepts can be developed for the end customers in cooperation with the IT service provider. In this way, resellers are able to offer customised IT environments for companies of all sizes (from micro-enterprises to growing start-ups, SMEs to large enterprises). Xelon's experienced technicians know the Swiss market and are at the same time very well networked in the international cloud ecosystem, so that they are always up to date when it comes to current developments and technological innovations.
Support also plays an important role: IT service providers and their customers should not be just a number with an IaaS provider. If a problem occurs with the cloud integrator, the personal contact person at the cloud service provider can react quickly and offer support. Those who purchase professional services from Xelon receive on-site support that ranges from a situation analysis to taking additional security measures to creating an IT emergency plan in the event of a disaster.