The cloud roadmaps of Australia's channel leaders

At times, the lunchtime discussion at the Park Hyatt Sydney saw some fiery philosophical debates on the definition of cloud and the differences between ‘born in the cloud’ businesses and re-invented traditional providers. We have cherry-picked some of the most enlightening insights that arose from the discussion.

The 19 August event could not have taken place without the support of our sponsors Kaseya, Rhipe and Avnet.

GUESTS
• Lyncoln De Mello Brennan IT
• Graham Robinson Data#3
• Nicki Bowers Kloud Solutions
• Michael Chanter Thomas Duryea Consulting
• Chuong Mai-Viet Bluesource
• Richard Clark VMtech
• Don McLean Fronde
• Justin Bailey Nexon
• Caerl Murray Ricoh
• Dan Wright Regional IT

SPONSORS
• Kellie Hackney Kaseya
• Stephen Parker Rhipe
• Chris Farrow Avnet

HOSTS
• Nate Cochrane CRN • Tony Yoo CRN

Public cloud won’t kill the channel

Michael Chanter, Thomas Duryea

"But we’re finding it’s actually nothing like that. In a recent example of a big customer deployment, what we did is we took the ERP and ran it on our cloud. There were a bunch of reasons around Oracle licensing that made that the right choice.

"Next to that, we deployed Office 365 and Windows 10 and a bunch of other components, including some Citrix. What we were doing as a systems integrator was that instead of connecting fibre channels for storage, we were connecting cloud platforms, identity management, our own cloud WAN and building a solution. It is a different cake, it’s made out of ingredients that include some on-prem, some devices, some cloud, some systems management.

"It’s not that they just went Office 365 and that solved everything."

There’s no one right choice between cloud and on-premise

Lyncoln De Mello, Brennan IT

"Nearly every business relies on some set of business applications. Not all of those have been designed from the ground up to work in a virtualised, multi-tenant type of environment. Even if they are, they still need some customisation around that.

"So based on those three criteria, we decide is it better remaining on-premise, in a boutique cloud – which we sometimes call a private cloud – or a ‘scaled’ cloud. I don’t think the word ‘public’ is actually correct for that; it’s a scaled cloud environment."

There’s no one right choice between cloud and on-premise

Graham Robinson, Data#3

"The fundamentals of our business aren’t changing – cloud is just a new way to consume offerings and solutions that we’ve had in the market for some time. ‘As-a-service’ is just a different way to consume a lot of the traditional capex-based investments our customers have been making."

Maybe there isn’t a cloud skills shortage. Maybe it’s you

Chuong Mai-Viet, Bluesource

Cloud hype is creating a gap in the data centre space

Richard Clark, VMtech

"For us, legacy is really core data centre infrastructure – big storage, big high-performance compute. We’ve got a lot of expertise in that space. So as we may see a lot of our competitors positioning software-as-a-service, hyperscale and so on, our core skillset is still in the data centre, and our data centre business is going from strength to strength."

The channel must cannibalise itself

Don MacLean, Fronde

"That’s where the real opportunity is in the channel for us – to say, ‘OK, forget about using something on-prem, why don’t you use Salesforce or NetSuite or Office 365 to enhance it?"

Chuong Mai-Viet, Bluesource

"That’s where our world is going and where it should go. Ultimately if we don’t do that, we’re all going to be doing something else in 20 years."

Don’t fight shadow IT

Justin Bailey, Nexon (centre)

"If you discover [shadow IT], how do you help the IT team harness that and use those tools? Make it relevant to the IT teams or compliance teams and bring them all in. I don’t think you should fear it."

Don MacLean, Fronde

Cloud compensation is a tough nut to crack

Kellie Hackney, Kaseya

Richard Clark, VMtech

The cloud channel is prime for ‘co-opetition’

Graham Robinson, Data#3

"We don’t pretend to know our customers’ business better than themselves. Our job is to understand what they’re trying to achieve and then work with the right partners: that may include vendors, that may include other channel partners."

Born-in-the-cloud partners can come back down the stack

Nicki Bowers, Kloud Solutions

We’re not putting in any [ethernet] ports as such, but going down to the architecture of the network layer. It’s about connecting customers’ data centres into the cloud.

"Another activity taking us into the future is our managed services. We are onboarding large enterprise customers and significant amounts of their workload every month. Managed services, within the next two years, will bring in 50 percent of our overall business. We are onboarding a large enterprise client every month."

Distributors become facilitators in a subscription world

Chris Farrow, Avnet

"There’s such great change in this space and no one’s going to have the capability to do it all. I think we’re all recognising that. If we can somehow facilitate those partnerships, connections and new business opportunities for everyone, that’s ‘job done’ for a new style distributor."

Supplier beware is replacing buyer beware

Stephen Parker, Rhipe

"So as a distie there’s a whole dynamic that’s changed and the services that we offer are focused on after the sale, not before the sale, and I think that creates an honesty."