Having absorbed the massive amount of views and discussions from last week's MSPWorld conference, I am beginning to see a trend emerging related to managed service providers and their views on cloud computing. To say that the MSP community's views on cloud have evolved over the last few years would be an understatement. The key question is how have those views evolved and what will they be in 2013 and beyond. Let's examine the issue.
How has cloud evolved since 2008?
Circa 2008, the average MSP would have had a "wait and see" view on cloud. At that time, many vendors were still early on in their cloud technology planning, and other than generic end user discussions around cloud, there wasn't a lot of solid movement or budget allocation for cloud (with the possible exception of the large enterprise). Today, it is a different story. Customers and vendors are all moving in the direction of cloud. New technologies are being developed on a contestant basis to help enable cloud for MSPs. Customers are rapidly discussing and spending money to integrate cloud into their IT plans. This is only part of the story though.
How do MSPs look at cloud today?
Last week's MSPWorld conference saw many public and private discussions about cloud computing and its role within the managed services community. The distinction I heard from MSPs is that a hybrid approach, combining both private and public cloud offerings, is most likely to become the de facto standard for many MSPs across the world. This approach will, in my opinion, maximize the likely effectiveness of MSPs to approach customers and give them both versions of cloud, thereby ensuring that data privacy, security, compliance, and other regulatory factors are all addressed.
Problems facing MSP cloud adoption in 2013
There remains, however, a fundamental problem that needs to be solved before MSPs can take this hybrid cloud approach to market. Public cloud is not an issue. Any MSP can simply "resell" or integrate a public cloud platform into their offering. Some MSPs, particularly those at the mid-market level, have been making a good go of monitoring public clouds on behalf of their customers. But, the MSPs who want to deliver private cloud face a challenge of infrastructure and financing that must be addressed immediately, if the concept of private cloud is to become a reality for MSPs and their customers.
Financing
The single biggest challenge, in my opinion, is not the technology, but the financial resources needed to develop a private cloud offering. MSPs have been well aquainted with virtualization technologies for many years now. Knowing how to use virtualization to develop a cloud offering is not the issue. How does a MSP finance the storage, server, redundancy, and other software and hardware requirements needed to have a viable private cloud?
Data centers aren't even the problem. There are plenty of data center facilities around the globe that would gladly partner with MSPs on this type of project. MSPs need help with financing the hardware and software needed to get a private cloud infrastructure going.
Is IaaS Helping?
It is, but not all the way. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers tend to provide MSPs with more public or hybrid cloud solutions because the infrastructure being used is not exclusive to the MSP. IaaS providers will sell their solutiosn to a group of MSPs who all share in the infrastructure This is fine if you don't have customers who would mind. However, the majority of the private cloud customer community likely will mind. After all, that's why they are looking at the private cloud in the first place.
IaaS providers need to either modify their offerings to include true private cloud environments, or realize they are leaving the private cloud community off the table.
Conclusions
There are a number of vendors (I won't and can't say who they are) who are right now developing true private cloud solutions for MSPs that will combine both the infrastructure technology and the financing components in one package. My guess is at least one of these will hit the market by 2013. Until then, MSPs need to be carefully architecting their cloud strategy to include all the spectrum of the cloud.
