ArrowSphere: a blueprint for cloud services distributors to follow?

It’s difficult to overemphasise the impact that cloud services are having on Colt’s distribution channel.

For many years, resellers (and therefore their distributors) have mainly relied on selling servers and licences to end customers. However, the introduction of cloud services has changed everything.

More and more, service providers like Colt are the main companies needing to buy boxes while end customers are begin to migrate to the cost efficiencies that the cloud brings.

As a result, resellers and distributors must react. But how can they plan for the future while staying on course in the present? Finding the correct balance of resources is undoubtedly tricky.

A tough choice for cloud services distributors.

Analysts predicted that customers would make the move into the cloud far more quickly than they actually have. With the momentum shifting more slowly than expected, both resellers and distributors have tended to delay making their major strategic moves.

After all, cloud services are less tangible than servers and licences were. Customers must get used to being sold nothing more tangible than a service level agreement and that means sales incentives need to be refocused.

The very fact that this new approach contains possible pitfalls, makes Arrow ECS’s new approach all the more bold and impressive. This year, it announced the launch of ArrowSphere, its new cloud services platform for value added resellers (VARs). The platform (or “portal”, to use the jargon) is at the heart of a business strategy to secure Arrow’s position in the new cloud based services landscape.

Supporting unmanaged Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Colt’s cloud compute, storage and network portfolio (“Infrastructure as a Service”) for distributors and resellers has been shaped to allow them to consume and resell Colt’s high-quality services without fear that Colt will compete with them for the managed service element. For example, Colt delegates full management of services such as VM creation and operation, backup & restore policy and operations, and even management of the change-of-location actions in the event of a disaster, to the reseller.

This approach aligns with our strategy of optimising the Colt capabilities for distributors and resellers, as well as their customers.

We believe that this new approach could be a blueprint for how distributors tackle the challenges and opportunities that cloud services bring. Furthermore, it’s extremely encouraging to see how seriously Arrow ECS is taking this initiative.

They have made a significant technology investment with ArrowSphere, something that is normally quite rare amongst distributors. Also, they have set up a cloud services team entirely focused on the cloud, and have chosen to launch the initiative in Europe before the USA.

In so many ways, this is a bold step for Arrow ECS, and one that Colt admires. While customer sentiment may have taken longer to shift towards the cloud than initially predicted, we believe this long expected trend is now firmly established.

As this occurs, resellers and distributors will need to react.

At Colt, we applaud Arrow ECS’s brave move, and by partnering with them we hope to both assist, and benefit from, their strategy.

Read more on this partnership here