A Shift to the Cloud
Spending on infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is growing at an exponential rate and is likely to reach USD 126 billion in 2020. Not confined to the SME sector or non-production workloads, these figures illustrate a continued trend of migration to the cloud including by larger enterprises with critical customer-facing production workloads. The shift towards the cloud presents both challenges and opportunities to data centre and telecommunications vendors. As a response to this transition and the newly observed challenges, CloudSigma launches a new solution called Cloud-as-a-Service (CaaS). The Cloud-as-a-Service model is founded on a collaboration between CloudSigma and a data center, telecommunications vendor or another company willing to offer public cloud services alongside its existing offering.
Infrastructure-as-a-service platforms are increasingly the primary portal used by IT staff and are growing their share of IT spending through fully integrated value-added services. Additionally, customer expectations for service quality and breadth continue to rise. For everyone except those few IaaS platforms, how to respond to the advent of cloud computing and not only survive but prosper?
The Cloud-as-a-Service Model
Enter the Cloud-as-a-Service model (CaaS).
“We provide a turn-key, fully managed solution that’s unique. Our partners benefit from a high-quality end to end service with low execution risk and a dedicated partner focused on growing their cloud revenues.”Robert Jenkin, CEO @ CloudSigma
With our Cloud-as-a-Service offering, CloudSigma is providing a unique fully managed public cloud node as part of our global cloud network. Cloud-as-a-Service providers a zero execution risk, high service quality cloud services solution to partners that can be deployed in under 45 days. Our Cloud-as-a-Service partners focus on expanding their market reach and offering new services that are core to their business activities whilst CloudSigma focuses on delivering a world class cloud solution underneath.
The Cloud-as-a-Service solution counts on the active participation of CloudSigma and its partner in the business development and customer acquisition relying on the expertise, knowledge and experience of both sides. Most of all, however, the Cloud-as-a-Service solution aims at providing a stable, customizable enterprise-grade cloud platform to our CaaS partners which they can rely on in order to build their successful cloud strategy.
Optimize Your Cloud Offering
The transition to cloud-based infrastructure leads to a consolidation of customers’ deployments in public clouds or in-house cloud installations. As a result, data centers and traditional hosting providers lose direct touch with end-users. They have to choose between three main scenarios: developing their own cloud platform, paying a lot for licenses to private cloud providers or finding a suitable partner to help them retain customers by providing trustworthy cloud infrastructure services.
“Lots of providers were just trying to sell their software or hardware which were really expensive. These companies did not know where the cloud was standing. CloudSigma on the other hand was a dedicated cloud provider who knew our pain and problems.”Fred Rodi, President @ DRFortress
If we eliminate the second option, we could turn to the development of a proprietary cloud stack by the data center/hosting vendor or the partnership with a well-known cloud provider. CaaS offers the perfect solution to the latter option. Via the CaaS collaboration, CloudSigma provides a fully managed public cloud product for installation in the partner’s data center. Compared to the process of development of an in-house solution, the CaaS model presents an opportunity for partners to get rid of the operational risk and cost associated with the running of a proprietary cloud stack. In addition, the CaaS solution provides 24/7 technical, network and incident management support, unique hybrid cloud capabilities, and last but not least, a world network of cloud locations for high availability and easy global expansion.
Apart from the ongoing management of the cloud, CloudSigma provides a marketplace of value-added service which all CaaS partners are encouraged to utilize as one of the solutions of their service portfolio. These services are an excellent complement to other solutions which our CaaS partners provide.
CloudSigma’s Cloud-as-a-Service Offer
The marketplace of value-added services comprises of solutions such as disaster recovery, migration and high availability, load balancing and many more. Not only could CaaS partners use these services to address the IT requirements of their end users but, unlike with other cloud providers, CloudSigma is able to develop new ones depending on the needs of the CaaS partner. The intention of CloudSigma is to build a successful cloud platform matching the demands of the CaaS partner. The collaboration between the CaaS partner and CloudSigma enables the company to create customized end-to-end solutions for hosting, cloud and networking connectivity at a competitive price through a single billing relationship.
“The cloud is definitely boosting our revenue. CloudSigma cloud has become an integral part of our service portfolio and we feel that through this partnership and this product, we are able to position ourselves as a premier cloud service provider in the Philippines which can go against AWS and Azure. This is giving us a sense of pride and without CloudSigma we would not be able to do this.”Nino Valmonte, Director - Marketing & Digital Innovation @ IPC
CloudSigma and the CaaS partner identify their mutual value propositions in order to bring supreme cloud platform to their consumers. CloudSigma easily and promptly adapts to the market demands in the regions where we deploy a cloud together with a CaaS partner. The company’s product development entails agile scrum sprints which ensures flexibility, adaptability to requests for new features of our CaaS partners and quickness of the service delivery. In return to the rapid adaptation to our CaaS partners’ business requirements and market segments, all existing CaaS partners of CloudSigma around the world can position themselves as leaders on the cloud market and accelerate their ROI.
Deploy relevant value-added services
At the same time, the robustness of the CloudSigma platform lies in its ability to meet local legal and accounting obligations. CloudSigma manages each one of its cloud platforms via separate legal entity observing the specific legislative requirements of each country where it is operating a cloud. Our legal and development teams work hand-in-hand with our CaaS partners to identify the rules implied by financial, accounting and legal regulations. In addition, CloudSigma puts efforts into modifying various service components in order to ensure that the end-users and their data are completely secure with respect to all known requirements of the individual country.
“The main benefit for end-users is that the cloud hosting is locally in the Philippines. There is no other cloud in the Philippines such as the CloudSigma cloud. There are other local clouds but in terms of capability, there is nothing close to what CloudSigma is able to provide.”Nino Valmonte, Director - Marketing & Digital Innovation @ IPC
Besides, the CaaS solution integrates with various accounting and billing tools, for example payment gateways and CRM systems, depending on the payment methods available to customers in the specific country and the systems used by our CaaS partners. Consequently, the consumers can utilise any of the payment and billing methods available in their state and on the CloudSigma platform.
On top of that, the CaaS product offers multi-lingual and multi-currency support which improves the interaction of the customers with the platform further. Combined with the compliance to the local legal and accounting requirements, the CaaS solution provides true “local cloud” experience.
Conclusion
“If we had chosen another cloud vendor, there would have been no real market differentiator between us and market competitors. This is why the alternatives were not attractive to us. We knew of other “of-the-shop” cloud solutions but what lead us to choose CloudSigma is that it was not just a software platform we could buy, it was a fully managed solution.”Paul Arch, Director @ DC West
The CaaS solution is perfect for anybody who wants to become a cloud leader on their market, attract new customers and retain existing ones, thanks to the holistic end-to-end infrastructure portfolio provided by CloudSigma. All our CaaS partners benefit from a turn-key, zero-hassle cloud, operated entirely by CloudSigma on a 24/7 basis. Our CaaS partners gain access to deployment options globally while keeping the cloud workloads on their own infrastructure. Subsequently, CloudSigma and the CaaS partner offer a highly available public cloud aligned with the distinct needs of the customers putting our CaaS partners on the front line of the local cloud market.
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- Not Just an Off-the-Shelf Cloud Solution - January 30, 2018
- Supercharge Your Cloud Revenue with our Cloud-as-a-Service Offering - January 17, 2018
- The Cloud-as-a-Service Revolution - January 17, 2018