Service Provider Insider

Marketing Predictions For SPs in 2011

As I work with various IT-oriented service providers, I now am trying to assess the size and scope of their marketing function.  

Why?  I think that marketing-related disciplines may hold the key to success for a great number of SP business strategies in the coming year.  

And I don't want my SP partners getting caught by surprise :-)

The SI/Consultant Edge

Sorry for the broken train of thought here ...

I was working my way through different predecessor business models, and how I felt that each had a unique advantage in this new world of "IT as a service", or -- more generically -- cloud.

In "The Regional Edge", I tried to make my case that strong regional and/or geographical ties appeared to confer an advantage in securing business and growth.  And I now know many EMC partners who are pursuing that model.

In "The Vertical Edge", I made a separate case that service providers who catered to the unique needs of a particular industry -- either with applications, or targeted infrastructure solutions -- appeared to have a similar advantage.

But, as I've come to find out, there appear to be many paths to success in this nascent business.

And, with this post, I'd like to share my perceptions as to why system integrators appear to have a unique angle on all of this.

My Discussions With A Cloud Builder

About a week ago, I had an interesting interaction with Randy Bias.  Randy (@randybias) has a great gig: he's CEO of a consulting firm (www.cloudscaling.com) that builds scale-out clouds much in the manner of AWS.

I found the discussion interesting because Randy's architectural philosophies are in contrast to the ones that VMware, Cisco and EMC are using to build private clouds with technologies such as a Vblock.

And anytime I meet someone who's enjoying success using a different belief system, I am very curious indeed.  Not only do I want to understand their value proposition, but I also want to see if pieces and parts of the EMC value proposition could play a role as well.

Atmos and The Importance Of Ecosystem

We as technology vendors have to do more than just bring shiny technology to the nascent service provider industry.

We have to bring clear market opportunities.  Differentiated answers to new problems.  Aligned software vendors.  An efficient route to market.  And, yes, a bit of shiny technology as well.

Call it an ecosystem, call it whatever. 

And we're starting to learn our lessons here ...