Cloud Professional Services: The Next Evolution of Business Transactions
In general, the services, which are offered within the purview of this market are inclusive of but not limited to, advisory services, performance testing services, system, and network integration services such as application load, training services. Albeit deployment and support services aren’t categorized as cloud professional services, they are also offered along with the aforementioned that also includes storage security services as well as data backup and recovery services. Further, increasing inclination towards a service-oriented economy is one of the major factors that is driving the global professional cloud services market growth. The very benefit of doing away with space thereafter reducing the cost incurred in real-estate purchase or rent and managing with minimal computer hardware, organizations around the globe are eagerly inclined to integrate cloud computing in their process.
The key types of consumers in this market
In this market of cloud professional services, there has emerged a few distinctions that are prevalent in today’s scenario. They are typically called traditional, pragmatic, transformational, next-gen types. So, looking at traditional archetypes, it is important to note that that this kind of consumer hasn’t yet embraced the benefits of professional cloud services to the extent it has been embraced however they are open to probability to integrate cloud services and transition from legacy solutions.
The next kind of consumer that of pragmatic archetype, wherein they are engaged with multiple service providers and in service-level or business-level agreements whereby they receive managed services and don’t concern themselves with everyday operations, management, and maintenance of the service. Then comes transformational kinds who actively formulate plans to transform their current IT infrastructure by shifting it to cloud environments. Their main objective is to bring about a change in the environment itself. Besides this sort of consumer is also looking forward to installing a more closely integrated as well as user-friendly applications, systems, and platforms.
The next kind of consumersare the ones called next-gen types who are the early adopters of cloud embraces the cloud-first approach. The objective is primarily to utilize applications to make use of applications to leverage cloud-native capabilities that are further used to develop applications in containers. Later they are provided as microservices, thereafter being managed on elastic infrastructures. The latter is done through the means of an agile DevOps process and continuous deliveryworkflows.
Certain key competitive strategies
To this end, there have been a few key developments, which have been set in motion by certain major market players in the global information and communications technology segment. They are as follows:
A broad multiyear agreement was announced between Microsoft Corp and AT&T Inc. in July 2019. The deal is to the tune of US $2 billion, whereby Microsoft has been tasked to provide solutions to the entire core telecommunications business of AT&T that is known as the AT&T Communications LLC organization. Under this deal, Microsoft’s Azure will become the latter’s preferred cloud platform for workloads that don’t concern its network infrastructure. Further, AT&T had also planned to migrate much of the AT&T Communications workforce to Microsoft 365 that will also enable AT&T to access the artificial intelligence-powered Azure Advanced Threat Protection service for preventing any cyber-attacks. The aforesaid service comes bundled with Office 365.
In February 2020, Prisma cloud – the consulting and managed security services industry’s most comprehensive cloud-native security platform that is designed to govern access, protect data and secure applications were unveiled by Trustwave for Palo Alto Networks. This development has been a step toward ensuring and maintaining the security of Palo Altos cloud footprint. Prisma Cloud will be leveraged by Trustwave to enhance threat monitoring and management of workloads across private and public clouds.
Again, during the same year in October, a leading IT strategic service provider InterVision announced the acquisition of an IT professional services and consulting firm known as Fotis Networks. Through the means of this acquisition InterVision aimed at strengthening its engineering talent and expertise which provides professional services to clients in the commercial, education, government as well as healthcare sectors to augment their capabilities with cloud services.
In 2019, IBM closed its acquisition of Red Hat an open-source, enterprise software maker for the US $34 billion to be integrated with IBM’s hybrid cloud division thereby increasing its prospects in the cloud infrastructure business. Thus, form the aforementioned strategic decisions it could comprehend that the Cloud Professional Services Market trend is on the upward rise and the need for the services has been realized more than ever.
Thereafter, in February 2020, Alphabet Inc’s cloud unit and SADA Systems Inc. have entered into a multilayered deal, were in Los Angeles -based SADA will commit to resell $500 million in Google Cloud services in the next three years. The services encompass the installation and consulting ofanalytics applications, call center and hybrid call on Google cloud. This deal with SADA is primarily aimed at acquiring more market share especially when Amazon and Microsoft have a lot of existing deals with enterprise space already.
Further, from a regional perspective tech giant like Microsoft and Google with Indian telcos Bharti Airtel (Airtel) and Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (Jio) have recently announce partnerships to offer cloud services to small and medium enterprises or SMEs that outlines a growing eagerness of technology firms to leverage the growing the Indian cloud services market. Airtel’s partnership with Google will enable Airtel to provide Google’s G-Suite services that include productivity as well as collaboration tools like Gmail, Google Drive Docs and Calendar in the cloud to its consumers of the SME segment of India.
These offerings will be a part of Airtel’s integrated information and communications technology (ICT) portfolio. On the other hand, India’s largest telco reliance Jio with its partnership with Microsoft’s partnership enables Reliance Jio to offer its cloud-based productivity, collaboration and business applications, including Microsoft Office 365 to Jio’s SME customers. These two deals are symbiotic in the sense that the collaborations will benefit the SMEs to accelerate their business agility and serve the evolving needs of customers through the means of the new innovative digital solutions and the cloud-cased productivity apps. Moreover, it will also enable the tech giants to acquire a significant market share of India which is projected to grow exponentially due to the swift adoption of cloud infrastructure and services.
