Steve Crawford , VP of marketing and business development at Jamcracker
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — The rapid growth of cloud technology has created the need for a marketplace where developers and providers are able to resell cloud services to enterprises and businesses.
Cloud services brokerage enablement company Jamcracker recently teamed up with Dutch IT services provider KPN to create a cloud services aggregator platform for enterprise customers.
The new business model gives providers the opportunity to expand and optimize their services through a centralized platform, offering both cloud-based KPN services as well as third-party and customer legacy services.
The partnership makes Jamcracker one of the first cloud services brokers to support large enterprises on a global scale, providing improved management of access to cloud services, identity management, performance reporting and enhanced security.
In an email interview, Jamcracker VP of marketing and business development Steve Crawford discussed the new cloud services aggregator platform it has launched in partnership with KPN.
WHIR: How did this partnership materialize? Did Jamcracker approach KPN, or vice versa?
Steve Crawford: KPN’s Getronics subsidiary has a long history of providing IT services to their enterprise customers, and the two companies started discussions on enabling a ‘Cloud Services Brokerage’ capability earlier this year. KPN’s strategy is to enhance and extend their current offerings by aggregating and integrating the delivery and usage of third party cloud services as a value-added service to their customers. This enables their customer IT groups to consolidate usage of disparate cloud services across their entire organizations.
WHIR: Can you tell me more about the cloud infrastructure behind the cloud services aggregator platform?
SC: Jamcracker has been providing aggregated services delivery for over 10 years, starting with ASPs, then software as a service and since then expanding the breadth of services we can deliver to include the entire cloud services IT stack — ranging from infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, SaaS and business services that can be delivered via the web. Jamcracker’s offering includes 3 main components: A platform that automates the entire order-to-cash workflow for distributing cloud services and unifying the life-cycle user/service management. The platform offers service integration, provisioning, billing, authentication, help desk ticketing, and service/user life cycle management and deployment capabilities to unify the efforts of multiple customers and partners. An ecosystem of pre-integrated cloud providers (see www.cloudcatalogue.com) and tools/processes for on-boarding KPN’s own cloud services as well as those of their partners’ (who are not already integrated to the Jamcracker platform). Business support services, including branded Level 2/3 support, operational support and cloud provider distribution agreements (for pre-integrated services) as well as vendor management.
WHIR: What is the criteria for the third-party cloud services KPN is offering in the marketplace?
SC: The primary offerings will include SaaS, IaaS and other cloud service offerings that are commonly used today by enterprise-class organizations, or for which enterprise demand is expected in 2012 and beyond. The platform will enable KPN’s enterprise customers to have a single point of catalogue management as well as unified provisioning, single sign-on, enterprise directory integration for enabling automated user provisioning and policy enforcement across different users and services, unified billing, and unified help-desk support.
WHIR: How is the pricing structured?
SC: The pricing structure includes a term license for the Jamcracker platform as well as operational and support services fees. KPN’s enterprise customers will have a direct billing relationship with KPN for services they utilize via the platform. For the most part these services will be priced on a subscription basis, enabling enterprises to pay for what they need and when they need it.
WHIR: What are some examples of companies and cloud services that are currently participating in the marketplace?
SC: The offerings include a wide range of infrastructure, application and business process services. Major service categories (and examples of providers) include Microsoft hosted collaboration services (e.g. Exchange, SharePoint, Lync), CRM (e.g. Salesforce.com), productivity applications (e.g. Google Apps), conferencing (e.g. WebEx, GoMeetNow), virtualized infrastructure (e.g. Amazon EC2), online backup (e.g. Mozy, Backup Agent), endpoint security (e.g. McAfee, Panda), file sharing (e.g. Skoot), as well as many other services from KPN and third party providers including desktop management, IaaS, managed PKI, connectivity, internet security, mobile device management, VoIP, hardware asset management and archiving. The KPN services ecosystem will continue to grow over time as more providers’ offerings and other KPN services are added to the catalogue.
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