The second afternoon session Tuesday was delivered by John McMillan, director of business consulting at Parallels, who looked at the delivery models of hosting and syndication.
The second afternoon session Tuesday, which was delivered by John McMillan, director of business consulting at Parallels, who looked at how service providers can decide on the delivery model of hosting, syndication, or a combination of the two.
In a presentation titled “Cloud Business Planning: Hosting, syndication or both”, McMillian first discussed the opportunity for service providers by becoming a single cloud provider for SMBs.
In what he coined as the six elements of cloud services planning, McMillian outlined the key steps of planning the delivery of cloud services.
The first, business rationale, refers to the business motivators for launching specific cloud services. Next is the capabilties assessment which looks at the resources you have to support the new services.
Market assessment refers to the trends, opportunities and competition in the market. The fourth element is product, which looks at what you are selling, who the consumer is, and at what price.
The fifth element is channel planning which explores the way you market, sell and support the product to customers.
And finally, the sixth aspect is delivery model, which looks at the best way to create these services, such as hosting, syndication, or a combination of both.
The key decision factors include revenue goals, internal capabilties such as support resources, the ability to compete such as geographic requirements, and desired time-to-market.
Though the majority of applications are hosted, says McMillian, syndication is growing at a steady pace.
Michelle Hall, product development of cloud services at Cincinnati Bell, shared her experience with helping to syndicate services.
The major factors of price erosion, legacy support costs, cloud acquisitions creating urgency, and the risk of not doing anything all contributed to Cincinnati Bell choosing syndication as a delivery model.
Joy A. Nemitz, chief marketing officer at Apptix also shared her experience with hosting services, such as hosted communications and collaboration.
About Justin Lee
Justin Lee has been a staff analyst with theWHIR since 2004. He writes about a range of web hosting and IT-related issues facing the industry on the WHIR website, as well the print version of the WHIR magazine. Follow him on Twitter @Justin_theWHIR.
