How IT Pros Buy Cloud Servers

Voice of IT TM

Cloudy with a High Chance of Sales

How IT Pros Buy Cloud Servers

For today's IT pros, the forecast is calling for clouds! With all the benefits that cloud servers have to offer, the future looks bright for small and midsized businesses ? especially those who are looking to minimize capital expenditures while scaling quickly and adding new capabilities. It's also good news for cloud server providers ? especially those who have a differentiated product offering and a clear understanding of what cloud buyers want.

insights

Take a peek into the minds of cloud buyers.

73% of IT pros recently surveyed already use cloud servers, are planning to use cloud servers within the year, or are actively investigating cloud servers as an alternative to onpremise servers. But for many IT pros, one cloud server looks much like another, which begs the question: In a commodity market, how can cloud server providers stand out from the pack? And what exactly are today's IT pros looking for in a cloud server provider?

27% 28%

36% 9%

Use of cloud servers

Already use cloud servers

Planning to use cloud servers within the year Actively investigating cloud servers

No interest in cloud servers

Sample = 332

Here's what we've learned firsthand at Spiceworks, where over 2M IT pros come to research products and services, interact with vendors, and make IT purchase decisions.

CLOUDY WITH A HIGH CHANCE OF SALES: HOW IT PROS BUY CLOUD SERVERS

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Not all cloud buyers are created equal.

IT pros who are shopping for cloud servers are looking for the same thing ? the best solution for the money. But how they go about determining which option is "best" depends on a variety of criteria. To help clear the air, we've grouped cloud buyers into five different categories based on the things they care about most. It goes without saying that the majority of buyers fall into more than one category. But by understanding these profiles, you can get a clearer sense of who your potential buyers are ? and where you need to focus your sales and marketing efforts.

The "Nuts and Bolts" Buyer

This buyer cares mainly about whether or not the solution is functional and within budget. Questions this buyer might ask:

? Can the solution support our OS platforms and run our applications? What web services integrations are available to us?

? Does the solution meet our I/O requirements? What will the latency, response times and throughput be for our applications?

? What's the pricing model and cost? What's my monthly expenditure going to be? ? What are the storage options and costs?

72% of IT pros surveyed ranked "nuts-and-bolts" factors as either #1 or #2 in importance when selecting a cloud provider.

CLOUDY WITH A HIGH CHANCE OF SALES: HOW IT PROS BUY CLOUD SERVERS

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The "CYA" Buyer

This buyer operates in a high-risk environment or highly regulated industry, resulting in heightened concerns across all areas of security. Questions this buyer might ask:

? What data protection strategies are offered? Backups, RAID, mirroring, replication, CDP, snapshots?

? What compliance support does the provider offer? Is the provider compliant with FISMA, PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOX, GLBA, NERC CIP, or other regulations that are relevant to my industry?

? What reporting options and audit support are available? Who has access to the audit trail?

? What does the provider offer in terms of physical and systems security? What are the provider's logical access control mechanisms? What security controls are in place from a facility perspective?

? What disaster recovery and business continuity plans does the provider have in place? How will our stuff be protected in the event of a power outage, facility disaster, local disaster and regional disaster? How quickly can operations be restored if the main system goes down?

? What's the problem management process? Who do I call when I have a problem? How are problems logged, communicated, prioritized and escalated?

60% of IT pros surveyed ranked these considerations as either #1 or #2 in importance when selecting a cloud provider.

CLOUDY WITH A HIGH CHANCE OF SALES: HOW IT PROS BUY CLOUD SERVERS

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The "Hot-Rod" Buyer

This buyer is all about ensuring high performance to support demanding applications and even more demanding users. Questions this buyer might ask:

? What uptime and performance SLAs does the provider offer? Are there penalties in place when SLAs are missed?

? What's the provisioning time for new servers? ? What are the scalability options? Can computing resources be expanded and

contracted automatically? ? Does the provider offer 24-hour customer service? ? What incident response time SLAs does the provider offer? Are there penalties

in place when SLAs are missed?

27% of IT pros surveyed ranked performance factors as either #1 or #2 in importance when selecting a cloud provider.

The "Cloud Control" Buyer

This buyer wants a lot of visibility into ? and control over ? the cloud environment, from technical elements to contracts and billing. Questions this buyer might ask:

? What options do we have for monitoring / visibility? Does the provider give us access to real-time performance monitoring and statistics?

? What's the management dashboard/control panel like? Is the interface easy to use? What capabilities does it provide?

? What are the options regarding contract length and terms of service? Does the provider offer the flexibility of a short-term agreement?

? What are the multitenancy options? Can each department be billed per cloud instance per hour? Can we impose billing limits?

? What are our exit options? Will the provider help us move our applications and data to another location when the time comes?

15% of IT pros surveyed these factors as either #1 or #2 in importance when selecting a cloud provider.

CLOUDY WITH A HIGH CHANCE OF SALES: HOW IT PROS BUY CLOUD SERVERS

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