Pragmatism is the answer when dealing with customers looking for cloud in enteprises, says Sumeet Sabharwal, VP and General Manager at Navisite. He says his audience is changing – it is now as much the CEO or CMO trying to bring cloud into the business; technology is more the end product. And it takes a coupdl of years for the benefits to be seen; he warns of false promises on technology, but suggests there is still 90% of the market out there.
The IT department has been on a journey in the last two-three years, he says. Technology is fundamental to business, but it is different everywhere. “We are seeing the ones [ IT departments] that are most successful are those that don't try to control so much as bring in governance and establish the guard-rails.”
It has to look at how it runs business IT, systems of engagement with the outside, where it is involved and then there is corporate IT – these are all different buckets.”
“We provide an enabled platform, so we are in a position for long term relationships. And we can bring in new customers based on the specific verticals and channels. The go-to-market for us is really that channel and partner community where we do a lot of work with channels in cloud with vertical expertise.”
The business users who went outside for services a few years ago, are smart – they don't want to be running their own IT. The dynamics have changed, - it used to be technology people hard-wired to the technology. “But the stakes have increased, particularly on security,” he says Some take the view that the IT department is acting as a broker and working as a layer of abstraction, or they may build tight coupling with vendors and bring in the end results that the business needs, with the agility that they need.
“But in the end the question has changed - it is not 'do I use cloud?, but when and which bits?'.
And there is still some way to go,” he adds.
“We did a study and concluded that there is still 90% of the potential market out there, and that gives us a sense of how far we are along the path, given that there is a lot more to go after, with transformations, and in many ways the first part – the first 10% was the easiest, in non-mission critical environments. Expectations are going to be higher for the next 10%. A lot of the partners are building expertise to drive value to the customer. Our role is to help them narrow down the next 10% and build their partner business in the right way.”
The partner has to deliver value – with domain expertise and IP, solutions which they are already bringing to market. There is value in a specific vertical market.
“We are here to talk to partners and customers, engage with potential prospects and understand the challenges. We are growing as fast as we like; not necessarily limited by partners, so much as by the enterprise journey to the cloud. It still takes nine months to talk to the client and to get them on the cloud, then another six to nine months for them to migrate workloads, so it can be a two year journey to recognise the benefits.”
“Integration is the tough one, and this is where being able to provide the online, with multiple cloud fabrics. It is easier with one provider. It has changed for us, with the CIOs it is a lot about education, and helping them transform their functions, and bringing in a framework with controls. Make technology work within your business, rather than retro-fitting the business round the technology.”
It is a journey and not so easy. We approach it with pragmatic expectations; you'd be surprised how this works and the engagement work is to spend time and come up with some thoughts – not when you are trying to sell them something. Too many are trying to make it sound too easy and CIOs have to be sceptical.
The change taking place in business – the CIO used to keep them at arms' length form the technology, with vendors providing services. The technology provider now has to understand the business far more.