The majority of telcos, system integrators and other cloud providers are moving to a cloud broker model, while the rest already recognise a pulling momentum from their customers and regional markets, reveals new Forrester report, ‘Cloud Brokers Will Reshape The Cloud’, complementing research on user adoption with ten interviews with major cloud providers and telcos.

Commissioned by Cordys, the Enterprise Cloud Platform provider, the study highlights that although adoption of the cloud broker model is increasing, there is still confusion around the term itself.

Cloud broker confusion

The term ‘cloud broker’ is used in different ways by cloud providers and is completely unknown to some potential users. From the Forrester interviews: four respondents indicated that their company had an immature understanding of the term cloud broker, typified by the lack of recognition and the use of inconsistent definitions by various stakeholders; three interviewees showed an emerging understanding, with wide acceptance of the cloud broker term but still lacking a consistent definition across the organisation; and only three respondents showed a mature understanding, with the majority of the employee base accepting the term cloud broker and using only one or two definitions.

“Our own experience confirms Forrester’s findings that demand for cloud broker services is on the rise,” commented Sudir Chopade, Senior Vice President Engineering, Cordys. “Yet there is clearly still confusion over what exactly the broker model entails. If telcos and service providers are to fully exploit the opportunity cloud broking offers, it’s crucial that they get to grips with their place in the market.”

Areas of opportunity

The paper also identified the different areas of growth for telcos, SIs and dedicated cloud providers. The telcos interviewed saw the most immediate demand for a broker services coming from the SMB segment. Some SMBs are already actively looking for the best ways to subscribe to SaaS applications, while large enterprises are mainly demanding specific cloud infrastructures. Only one telco firm already sees large enterprises demanding SaaS applications.

In contrast, SIs see large enterprises increasingly starting to consider cloud broker services. They are tired of paying license and maintenance and so are starting to engage in enterprise solution stores.

Pure cloud providers target a global audience of all company sizes via standardised offerings. All of the interviewed cloud providers prefer the infrastructure broker model because they realise the preference of their enterprise customers and understand the necessity to supply SaaS brokers with localised SaaS applications. The unified self-service and app-store capabilities are key to underpinning their positions as pure cloud providers.

“Becoming a cloud broker allows telcos and service providers to encourage adoption of cloud services, open up new revenue streams and launch value added services,” added Chopade. “A solution like the Cordys Enterprise Cloud Platform allows an organization to offer the best of SaaS, IaaS and existing software and service assets as a managed service to their customers. We are already seeing organizations taking advantage of this, for example Fujitsu, Clouditalia and Getronics have all adopted Cordys to integrate and orchestrate a portfolio of cloud services for their customers.”

ShareThis

Tags: Hosting & Colocation

Read more White Papers»

More DCS TV»

More Audio»

Read more Web Exclusives»

Read more Magazine Articles»

Read more Supplements »

Keep up to date with the latest industry products, services and technologies from the world's leading IT companies.

• Virtualization Success Depends on Network Automation by Infoblox

• The Infoblox VMware vCenter Orchestrator Plug-in by Infoblox

• Automated Storage Tiering on Infortrend’s ESVA Solution by Infortrend

• Why Cloud Backup: Top 10 Reasons by Autonomy

• How to Measure the ROI of Cloud Data Protection by Autonomy

Latest IT jobs from leading companies.

Click here for full listings»