SPECIAL NEWS REPORT Outsourcery refocuses
The sale of Outsourcery’s Vodafone mobile voice and data business to Daisy Group has brought about a clarity of vision and focus that was previously missing in Outsourcery’s strategic aim to be the cloud provider choice, according to Simon Howitt, Channel Business Unit Director.
data businesses were spun out into a new company prior to the Vodafone component sale and continues to operate under the Outsourcery brand. Outsourcery has a strong heritage in the mobile comms space but its re- branding in 2009 initiated a long-term drive towards becoming a trail blazing Cloud Services Provider (CSP). That said, mobile remains a key part of the business via its relationship with O2. Working closely with O2 Outsourcery aims to provide voice and data solutions for the next generation of mobile which will be increasingly integrated with cloud-based UC solutions.
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The decision to spin off the Vodafone part of Outsourcery was driven by a number of factors, explained Howitt. “We came to the conclusion that our Vodafone base was predominantly mobile-driven and offered little opportunity to develop the relationship into utilising the cloud in the way we wanted to,” he said.
Having greater clarity around its core positioning has enabled Outsourcery to grow its expertise in a more focused way that plays to high growth markets. Projections from analysts such as Gartner and IDC indicate that the cloud will undergo phenomenal growth over the
utsourcery’s ongoing cloud services and O2 mobile voice and
because it increases the firm’s reach, scale and ability to deliver cloud propositions to the widest definition of a customer base. “We have created a win-win situation as our strategy can closely dovetail with a resellers’ roadmap,” said Howitt. “Our InPartnership programme has been designed to support partners irrespective of their level of competence or knowledge and deliver as much flexibility as possible.”
Simon Howitt
Customers are taking a hard look at the cloud
coming years, with Gartner predicting a potential value in excess of £18 billion by 2014. “Customers are already taking a long hard look at the cloud, and as recent research from the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) shows, 94 per cent of respondents expressed satisfaction with their implementations,” commented Howitt.
According to Howitt the real money will be made
in around two years time, however resellers should not be fooled into delaying a cloud decision until then otherwise they will miss the boat. “We intend to work with resellers to help them understand and embrace the cloud and take advantage of the dynamics occurring naturally in the market,” added Howitt.
The channel is central to Outsourcery’s strategy
InPartnership The reason for this is approach simple: Every partner will have their own strategy, their own focus and will be at their own stage of development. “In Partnership allows resellers to select a way of working with us, enabling them to participate in the cloud revolution at a level of involvement and commitment that fits their business model and comfort factor,” Howitt added.
Outsourcery’s vision to be the CSP of choice is crystal clear. “We will do this through developing and harnessing the strength of our Microsoft relationship and building on our innovation, recently acknowledge by our winning of the Microsoft Hosting partner of the Year 2010 award,” stated Howitt. “We will also ensure that we can deliver mobilising applications as an important part of the overall strategy and see our developing relationship with O2 as a
crucial aspect of our plans. To maximise the customer experience and provide business class connectivity we have also put in place a relationship with BE.”
Outsourcery currently has around 240 partners evenly split between comms and IT VARs. “We expect to grow this number to 400 this year, and alongside these we will have a small number of strategic partners numbering about 10 or less whose roles will be clearly defined,” revealed Howitt. “Further channel recruitment campaigns will be kicked-off shortly and we are revamping and re-launching our partner portal and website.”
As part of its long-term strategy Outsourcery has invested in a new state- of-the-art virtualised cloud platform based on Microsoft’s Hyper-V Cloud, which will be launched in Q2. The company intends to scale its business and provide a broad software-as-a-service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a- Service (PaaS) product set in its sector, together with service and support for customers and partners.
Howitt commented: “We are delighted to have finalised the deal with Daisy, and we are excited about the future of the Outsourcery business. The deal has resulted in the creation of a new and focused group of companies.”
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26 COMMS DEALER MAY 2011
www.comms-dealer.com
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