Red Hat, in partnership with CRN, recently shared detailed market research on customer attitudes towards public and hybrid cloud, and the opportunities for service providers looking to add new revenue streams in 2021. In the candid discussion, Red Hat shared some surprising details on what customers are looking for from their service providers.
While discussion of public cloud dominates the articles you might have read, customers are still mostly doing other things.
54% of APAC customers said their cloud strategy was either hybrid or private cloud, with only 9% reporting they were standardising on a single public cloud, according to research in the Red Hat Global Customer Tech Outlook 2020.
Customers want options, and they need advice from their service provider partners on which options suit them best. Fully 17% of customers in APAC reported they were still establishing their cloud strategy, and they’ll need assistance and advice.
This is where the opportunity for service providers lies: in helping customers to navigate the often bewildering range of options from different cloud providers and deciding on the right mix of solutions for them.
77% of customers surveyed said they planned to increase their investment in enterprise open source technologies, according to Red Hat’s State of the Enterprise Open Source report. The past year has demonstrated how rapidly things can change when they need to, and many organisations have now proved to themselves what can be done when they set their minds to it.
It’s clear from the research that customers want a hybrid approach of some public cloud, some private cloud, and some on-site solutions. They don’t want to find themselves in a one-size-fits-none situation because they made a hasty choice based on incomplete information and they want to maintain flexibility because they know how rapidly things might need to change.
Red Hat emphasised that 74% of their revenue comes from bookings through partners and that percentage has been growing over the past ten years. Red Hat’s incentives are clearly aligned with those of partners. Getting squeezed out as customers go direct is a concern for many service providers, so by choosing Red Hat as a partner they can strengthen their relationship with their customers to achieve a true trusted advisor status.
To learn more about how you can create new revenue streams for your service provider business, watch the full discussion on demand here.
