Matt Davies

The cloud is often touted as the answer to all our problems. It offers countless possibilities, from increased agility and reduced costs for enterprises, to a revenue lifeline for service providers as they take their first steps toward becoming a cloud broker. The cloud broker model can give service providers the chance to avoid commoditization by repackaging their own offerings together with cloud services and selling these to customers. But cloud brokers beware. There's a risk of being a jack of all trades and master of none. It's crucial to ensure that a cloud offering is designed to meet the needs of a specific market. For example, enterprises and small/medium sized businesses (SMBs) will hardly subscribe to all cloud services from a single provider. So which approach is best for which target market? Serving the needs of SMBs For telcos with access to a large n... (more)

Envisioning Cloud Brokering for a New Year

Hopefully you watched Forrester's Stefan Ried present his webinar on cloud brokering and the many opportunities for different kinds of companies to exploit this technology. Part of Stefan's conversation included an explanation of the evolution to a unified cloud broker. If you missed it, you can catch up with it here. As 2013 begins, it's a natural time to explore where cloud brokering is headed. A cloud broker is the intersection of infrastructure, software and consultancy. Naturally, technology is a key enabler for a service provider adopting the broker role but it also impact... (more)