Microsoft CSP Program and Product Updates | February 2019
With the right partner, skills-challenged customers can still benefit from emerging technologies
Choosing the best way to embrace the cloud can be tough – but it’s worth it in the long run, as long as you are backed by the right partners to help you make the most of new technologies.
Finding those partners isn’t always the first priority of businesses stepping into cloud services, however: more often than not, companies’ first exposure to cloud services is through the actions of employees that signed up for one or more services and just began using them.
Others may have embraced particular line-of-business applications providing email, human resources, stock management, or other capabilities.
But that’s only the beginning of what the cloud can do for business. Its transformative power promises easier access to cutting-edge new technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and more.
For the first time, businesses are thinking about these and other new technologies not as products to be purchased, but as capabilities that can be tightly integrated into everyday operations without needing to buy and maintain expensive infrastructure.
This integration is transformational in the right hands, and that’s why the next generation of consumer has come to expect this level of change. However, rhipe’s recent partner survey, Digital Transformation: The pulse of Australian MSPs, found that what is actually being delivered is something quite different.
The survey polled 102 respondents at the national rhipeFest roadshow and found that just 19 percent are actively working on IoT projects and see the technology as a major future opportunity.
That’s a low percentage given that business customers are, anecdotally at least, interested in innovative technologies to improve their operations. Yet there is a gap between what customers want to accomplish, and what they are able to accomplish: a recent IoT Alliance NZ report, for one, found that 70 percent of respondents believe IoT will be transformational or strategic for their business, but only 14% have actually deployed a solution.
With IDC predicting that the talent pool for emerging technologies will lag demand by at least 30 percent through 2022, it’s clear that exploring new technologies and actually implementing them are two separate challenges.
Managed service providers (MSPs) and cloud service providers (CSPs) are uniquely positioned to close the gap.
By building up their own expertise in emerging technologies, MSPs and CSPs can make themselves available to customers both as sources of expertise around those technologies, and as sources of skills to implement them. They may also offer tools and services to help customers manage their deployments, then to monitor their use of services to avoid cost blowouts.
With the right partners, anything is possible – which means that for customers with an eye on the future, the time to reach out to partners is now.
Find your next generation service provider at Microsoft Ignite, 13 & 14 February at the ICC Sydney. https://rhi.pe/s8
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