Channel veterans launch cloud-only distributor

Accucom non-executive manager Roy Pater and director Sam Sarkis have launched InfraServe Managed Services - a cloud-only distributor - for small and medium sized businesses in Australia.

The business, which is run independently from integrator Accucom, is focused entirely on distributing a "breadth" of cloud services and its mission "is to flatten the cost and time for resellers to build and provide cloud products".

"What [we've done] is set up a pure play, cloud-only distributor. It's got to be cloud and it's got to be on a pay-per-use basis - we don't sell any hardware," InfraServe managing director Roy Pater told CRN.

The joint venture is the result of Pater's stint at integrator Accucom. He joined the integrator earlier this year with the "sole focus" of building up Accucom's cloud computing environment.

"We asked ourselves, "why are we building our own cloud?

"Cloud is fast becoming mainstream, we should be buying cloud just like we buy a HP or IBM computer or any computer equipment," he said. "Vendors supply it, distributors supply it to resellers, and resellers supply it to the end user.

"And we suddenly realised there is nobody out there that is a distributor of cloud," he told CRN.

Vadis Systems, a cloud focused distributor launched last November and it has three main areas of focus; cloud services/virtualisation, networking and security. 

Value add

Pater said the real value for resellers is that InfraServe will provide an "easy transition into buying and reselling cloud products". And for vendors? "They've got a distributor that can get their product out to the masses," he said.

"Our role is really to make it an easy go to market and help resellers integrate their business, do the right research, and find the right companies with good products so that we can then distribute it to them."

Pater said the real challenge for "anyone getting into cloud computing is to have the right level of capital to build a scalable infrastructure.

"But there's a lot of complexity in the areas of provisioning and the billing for resellers that want to get into cloud," he said.

"Part of what we've got is a billing and provisioning engine that we provide resellers. We've built a proper quoting system so that it becomes very easy to quote cloud. We've built that into our deal builder tool. It's a provisioning system that feeds straight into the billing system.

"Because that's the key to cloud - any user, be it the end user, be it the reseller, or be it us as the distributor - should be able to provision a user and have that instant provision without having to fill out lots of paperwork and go through a manual process.

"You can't scale in the cloud if everything is manual - it has to be highly automated. It should be as easy as it is today to go to the web and buy a computer online. Really there is not difference in buying that or buying a hosted Exchange or buying an additional server in the cloud," said Pater. 

InfraServe has developed the quoting system in-house and the billing and provisioning tool is an integration of several different tools and systems, he said.

Partners

Pater said the distributor is looking for a breadth of vendors that will be complimentary to each other.

He said there will be overlap in "some instances", which the distributor will try to reduce.

"We're not going to have two of the same vendors because there's no value in that. It confuses the channel," he said.  

Meanwhile, Pater said his time day to day will be in InfraServe but he will hold a non-executive management position within Accucom "for the time being."