If you are considering expanding your cloud services through the reseller model, there are 10 ‘must haves’ needed to support this strategy. Smart service providers are already gaining reach through other organizations’ existing relationships and resources by maximizing resellers’ vertical and industry-specific expertise and geographic coverage without requiring heavy investment in sales and marketing. This model offers huge possibilities in terms of revenue growth without significant investment to build your own resources and presence.
Our latest whitepaper outlines the 10 ‘must haves’ for cloud service providers to support a cloud reseller channel. Whether you are looking to resell through a single tier or multiple tier of resellers, these ‘must-haves’ apply. Here is a quick look at one of those ‘must haves’.
Multiple Cloud Metering and Billing Models
Service providers worry about complex metering and billing situations associated with the cloud services reseller model. Where a service provider resells infrastructure to another reseller and then another (a reseller, of a reseller, of a reseller, for example), a cloud orchestration solution that can support the complex nature of billing for this becomes essential. It should easily incorporate full transparency of how resources are metered and billed according to a cloud reseller’s strategy.
Metering needs to be highly granular with the ability to attribute use of resources to each reseller and its customers. The metering and billing must be provided in detail to easily identify cloud usage across all resellers, however many layers, and their customers. One analyst anecdotally commented recently about the importance of this multi-tiered metering and billing model. Without it, your reseller strategy will not get off the ground because you won’t have the capability to meter and bill accurately, which means scalability is not an option.
Furthermore, each service provider and each one of its resellers requires the ability to bill according to its business. They might want to meter resource used, but bill on a monthly subscription based billing system or pay-as-you-go (PAYG) model. Service providers should ensure whatever cloud management solution they choose accommodates the billing model their customers and/or resellers require to grow their businesses.
The first ‘must have’ is the ability to manage, meter and bill for the customers, resellers, distributors and service providers involved. This capability will allow cloud services resellers to gain benefits from new routes to market.
Download the whitepaper to read through the other nine ‘must haves’ and see a framework and checklist for identifying and evaluating the right cloud management technology to support your reseller business.
Hi,
I am interested in flexiant management software for IaaS providers. We are working on setting up a new company with a major focus on vm hosting at initial stage.
Before I go investigate further what flexiant can do for us in detail – probably with your guys’ assistance, we are keen to understand the pricing model first as we are very sensitive to solution cost. A ball park figure will be ok for the time being. In addition, please advise where we can download trail software so we can give it a quick testing.
Thanks,
Jason
Hey Jason,
Thanks for your comment- sounds great. One of the Flexiant Team will be in contact very shortly.
Kind Regards,
Joe Sherman
Digital Marketing Manager