We asked 451 Research, the CEO of ThinkGrid and Director at Colt Ceano, part of Colt Technology Services and Founder of Flexiant about what the cloud service provider needs to succeed. Visit our Mission to Mars webpage where we offer you the questions and answers from this session.
One question asked was ‘Why is speed to market important?’ Here are the responses from Michael Coté, Research Director, Infrastructure Software at 451 Research, previously of Dell and Tony Lucas at Flexiant.
Tony: It absolutely is important, but it’s important for reasons beyond the obvious one because the classic answer people might say is well of course he will say that because you are a vendor. The reality is until you actually have something, a toe in the water, you do not know what is going to work for you and what is not going to work. In the same way that people talk about software development versus agile development, it’s the same when you are developing a cloud service. You cannot spend 18 months developing it, not just because it takes 18 months to develop it, but because you might not be developing the right thing, you might not actually be bringing a service to market that customers want.
This is the decade of the service provider. You have the opportunity to differentiate, gain competitiveness and grow in size, but we all face challenges. To help you on your journey to the cloud, we have launched our series of podcasts to offer advice for service providers looking to succeed on the cloud battleground.
Here you will find two of our newest podcasts to help you win the cloud war:
1. New! Marketing Innovations Every Service Provider Should Know
Service Providers can no longer rely on the traditional growth that they have previously seen based solely on the strength of their offerings. Ever increasing competition has made it imperative to stand out from the competition and engage in a comprehensive marketing strategy. This podcast will look at innovations and methodologies that Service Providers can use to build a loyal customer base.
Presented by Jim Foley and Joe Sherman, Flexiant
At WHD.global, Tony presented “Why a tight knit ecosystem is critical for service providers to achieve revenue growth.” The interactive session showcased that many of the attending cloud service providers are focused on differentiating themselves by developing an ecosystem of best of breed products and services.
If you want to learn why all service providers should be looking at creating an ecosystem and how to go about it, listen to our podcast below.
Tony says:
“Service providers are too used to selling raw infrastructure without adding distinct value to their end users through differentiation. Whether they are selling to enterprises or SMEs they need to be able to add value through the services that they offer. The simplest way to do that is to work with a variety of companies who can add distinct value over and above infrastructure using an ecosystem who have world class products and capabilities but not necessarily the routes to market and customer base that the service providers have already established.”
Listen below.
Flexiant recently attended WHD.global where we met with hundreds of service providers and heard first hand about the challenges they are experiencing.
At the event we did some filming and got some different perspectives of what service providers are looking for and the changes in the market place.
Sergey Skurykhin from vps.eu talked to us from the service provider’s perspective, whilst our own Marco Meinardi shares his view on the hot topics from service providers at the show. Finally, Tony Lucas compares the difference from 2013 to 2014 and how service providers mindsets have evolved.
Watch now to find out more.
This morning, Jim Foley and I spoke at WHD.global on the topic, ‘Marketing Innovations every Cloud Service Provider Should Know’. The presentation was based on research into hundreds of service providers and how they are currently going about their marketing. The results proved that many service providers are not taking the full advantage of the marketing tools available to them, which could cause them to miss out on customers. We both thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to discuss marketing methodologies and tools that can differentiate service providers from their competition.
Judging by the turn out, service providers understand that in an increasingly commoditized market, it is essential to arm yourself with every tool available, to find, listen and engage with your target market. To help support service providers even further, we have produced a special report that highlights the possible pitfalls and gives resources and suggestions to help get you started. For our full special report please click here or below.
Report Summary: Flexiant studied a variety of hosting companies and service providers, using various tools to understand each company’s online presence and marketing. Many of the companies researched are past or current participants at WHD Global. The research was conducted without the involvement of the individual companies using analytical tools that are widely available.
