Westcon chief executive officer Dean Douglas affirmed the distributor’s trial of a white-label, public-cloud service for resellers was progressing well with Australian partners expected to be online by March.
He said six resellers were in the British trial of its cloud aggregator, which helped them find and deliver public clouds for small to medium-sized businesses, that Westcon will extend to Europe.
“The problem [with the cloud] is that mid-sized organisations can’t afford to put it together,” Douglas said. And those trying to do were frustrated because most cloud products were incompatible “point solutions”, he said.
Customers' need to replace capital spending was also behind the drift: “Money is tough these days; many companies would prefer to pay $50 a month rather than a $5000 fee”. This meant resellers shifting their stance to accept monthly annuities.
He expected a good response to Westcon’s service but said it would likely result in “cannibalisation” of its existing business as resellers responded to customer demand.
And although most of its resellers understood the opportunities, few understood the challenges such as foreign exchange and billing.
“Things are becoming more complex due to the advent of the public cloud,” he said. “It’s going to be a real challenge for lots of enterprises.”
The Weston service meshed with its financial systems for simpler billing, he said.
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