Enterprises have spoken, when it comes to the public cloud, serious cracks are emerging on the surface of the shiny hyperscalers. From failed promises on cost-savings to mythical redundancy and availability provision, CIOs are starting to question the real value public cloud brings to their enterprise.
Cracks started to show over the last couple of years – the economics didn’t match the glitzy presentations or mirror the exponential successes of the cloud-native enterprises, often the flagships of the hyperscalers customer conferences. But the cracks widened when COVID-19 hit. The mass rush to the cloud was unprecedented, but that wasn’t much consolation for enterprises left out in the cold when their competitors chewed up the availability they’d paid for. Even later, as the new normal set in, local availability in regions failed to keep up with demand – leaving CIOs reflecting on whether their cloud migration strategy was worth it.
In the latest Magic Quadrant on Hyperscale Cloud, Gartner analysts highlighted a series of issues – the same set of broken promises. The report – now widely circulated – with a summary of the findings published by The Register (Click here), resonated with a community of enterprise buyers rapidly disillusioned with the failures of hyperscalers.
But there’s another side to the coin. For the IT Services firms, there is now more opportunity than ever to grow the value of the cloud services market. Enterprise leaders irritated by the hyperscalers will want help – a partner they can rely on to get a better deal. A partner that can bridge the gap between the hyperscalers core solutions, and their business’s vision for their IT infrastructure. The clincher is, they must get their messaging and approach right, and quickly if they’re to succeed.
Want to win in the cloud market? Partner up and plug gaps in the value chain with your own solutions
With decades of analyst experience under my belt, there’s a clear approach service providers must take. Going toe-to-toe with hyperscalers in the public cloud market isn’t going to work. Even with all of the resources at their disposal, IBM struggled. So the high-value IT Services firms must look elsewhere to add value. And with a list of pain points emerging from enterprises, here is where their messaging and solutions are best directed.
Let’s take the cost pain point – there are serious market dynamics at play here which, if we’re honest, nobody other than the hyperscalers can solve. Gartner’s analysts assert that despite the drop in equipment, for example, AWS’s pricing hasn’t dropped. That’s a pricing decision for AWS, and it’s unlikely even the largest providers can haul them over the coals to change it. But they can make the pill easier to swallow by more effectively tracking, managing, and optimizing the costs. Intelligent platforms that map workloads to drive greater efficiency won’t drive down the core pricing from AWS – but it will help manage the total cost. Particularly with the increasing occurrence of pricey bills coming through from CPUs spinning in the background without anyone realizing.
Availability is a tougher nut to crack without scale, but again solutions and services that help distribute workloads and build redundancy outside of a single cloud provider bring greater assurance. Sadly, the idea that the hyperscalers are the unsinkable ship of infrastructure has been permanently sunk by the COVID-19 iceberg. Now enterprises need insurance for the uninsurable – and that’s something the services majors can help with.
Building solutions is vital, but it all means nothing if there isn’t a clear message
Of course, solutioning is one thing – a vital step for services firms looking to move beyond the migration game and firmly embed themselves in the cloud value chain. But the competition won’t be resting on their laurels. Messaging is key – and this is an area where some of the most carefully designed solutions lose traction to their slicker rivals. Providers need to target their messaging based on three core areas to succeed in the cloud market:
• Who we want: Which industries do we want to work with? What type of businesses do we have a healthy book of work with, one where we can bring serious proof of delivery to the market? What industry-specific solutions do we have that can cross-pollinate or supplement our cloud services?
• What we build: What do we have that solves a problem – something beyond the out-the-box capability that a hyperscaler brings to enterprises? What do we need to develop to make a structural change to the market and repair some of those emerging cracks in the market?
• Who we are: This is the part where most providers fall flat – they don’t understand who they are and why they’re different. So the markets and their clients don’t either. They need to ask, what makes us different? What will we do? And more importantly, what won’t we do?
By tackling each of these points, providers can come to a crowded market, but one desperately looking for help, with a crystal clear message to support their services and solutions. Of course, this is a more demanding process than just rattling through these bullet points. Finding a third party that can offer an impartial view and dissects internal and external data sources is vital to success.
At Market Prescience, we can work with you to build clear messaging around your services and solutions – pulling in decades of analyst experience and research.
