With companies large and small looking to the cloud for the next generation of their computing environments, they must have access to the right skills and support to deal with the complex, hybrid environment in which they find themselves.
Willie Jansen van Rensburg, Executive: Axiz Cloud Technologies, explains that to help their partners meet customers’ needs, they’re actively working to grow their cloud offering. “Because of the complexity of migrating to the cloud, we need to support our partners. It includes increasing our support services as well as working with our partners to identify opportunities to grow their business in this area.”
Making the market
“We’re committed to drive demand for these services and help our partners grow their businesses in this area. Through our technical services and DevOps capabilities, we can accelerate their move to a services-focused business model, something that is key to long-term sustainability.”
He explains that it’s critical that partners who have traditionally focused on providing on-premises solutions expand the scope of their offerings to support hybrid IT models.
“Over the past few years, we’ve seen a massive increase in demand for cloud services, and, in their role as trusted IT advisors, our partners are asked to assist their customers,” he says. “To enable this, cloud skills and an understanding of the complexities inherent in migrating applications to the cloud is crucial in ensuring success. It’s not just about knowing how to migrate an application to the cloud, it is about knowing which applications will benefit most, as well as being able to ensure that the cloud applications integrate with applications hosted elsewhere.”
24/7 support
One of the key cloud drivers is the pressure from end-users for companies to provide services that are always accessible. “When you need your applications to be available 24/7, there’s increased pressure on the IT partner to be able to address any issues, even when they occur outside business hours,” says Jansen van Rensburg. “For many service providers, providing this level of support isn’t possible. Over the next few months, we’ll be expanding our help desk to deliver this on their behalf. Leveraging this service allows even smaller partners to provide support levels on par with that offered by large IT companies.”
He adds that there is already a close alignment between the technology partners in the Axiz product offering and the Azure ecosystem. It enables partners to leverage their existing vendor skills in concert with the Azure platform.
“Our mission is to help our partners grow their businesses and ensure that they can take advantage of any opportunities that arise. Leveraging the range of professional and technical services that we deliver will ensure that they can evolve to meet the changing demands of their customers.”