Partners of Axoft are ready to go to clouds: results of a research of the distributor

On start

Emergence of a cloud platform of AxoftCloud at the beginning of 2016 opened a new opportunity before partners of Axoft: try out as cloud service provider. Whether they are ready to develop the cloud direction in the business?

To answer this question, Axoft conducted survey of partners – system integrators and Var'ov – from 506 companies. Heads of the companies, commercial directors, directors of business development and heads of sales departments participated in a research. Share of the Moscow companies in poll made 8%, other participants, 92%, – regional representatives.

The interest of partners of Axoft in promotion of cloud solutions is explained IT market, first of all, by the fact that this direction offers them good prospects for business development. Thanks to implementation of cloud solutions, customers receive not only to save a method, but also an opportunity to qualitatively change business: reduce costs for IT and also optimize internal resources. The Russian market of clouds is still very young that explains its rapid growth and special attention of representatives of IT-Business to this subject. Based on the research Axoft, 94% of partners indicated that they are familiar with a subject of clouds. For representatives of the Moscow companies this percent was a little higher, than for representatives of regional business. It is slightly less than a half of respondents, 48%, estimated the knowledge on "well" and "perfectly".

Problems and solutions

At the same time, despite a keen interest to cloud subject, real sales of clouds are performed meanwhile not by all partners of Axoft. "Acquaintance" to clouds for many market participants remains only theoretical: less than a third of partners of Axoft have practical experience of sales of cloud-solutions – 28%.

"Such situation is explained by the fact that in most cases players of IT market have a weak idea of how to advance cloud computing. Besides, this result can be considered overestimated as at partners uniform understanding of what products should be carried to cloud services for the present was not created", - Evgeny Kurtukov, the head of support department and development of sales of Axoft comments.

On other bowl of scales - end consumers: not all Russian IT companies are already ready to pass into clouds, quite often players of the market treat them extremely watchfully. In most cases, if to speak about public clouds, the question of safety of confidential data becomes a stumbling block. 34% of respondents face this objection. A little more than a quarter of respondents (29%) called as a cause of failure of work with clouds "Dependence on provider", 21% - "The shortage of skills of work with cloud computing".

Having secured with strong support of distributors, resellers are ready to test in a new role in IT market: as cloud service providers. A half of the polled partners (50%) at the moment considers clouds as an opportunity for expansion of the business. 29% of respondents for the present are at a decision-making stage, and only 21% of participants of the research Axoft do not perceive a cloud as an opportunity for business development.

From the theory to practice

In practice a little more than a half of the companies to some extent uses for a long time cloud solutions in the work: it was confirmed to 53% of the polled partners of Axoft. And in this plan regions do not lag behind Moscow at all: 56% in the capital against 52% in regions.

During the survey conducted by Axoft company, it was offered to partners to estimate what type of cloud solutions, they are ready to offer customers in 2016. The answer to this question was given by 57% of respondents. Generally both to partners, and their customers clouds as storages of backup copies and contemporary records and also as services in providing access to business applications and corporate mail are interesting.

It corresponds to audience of poll – the large and average IT companies. A business intelligence, CRM, Development tools – more niche solutions – is expected received small percent of votes as not all types of partners of Axoft are engaged in such solutions.

What products, most likely, will be the most perspective in 2016? During the poll it was offered to partners to select the solutions which are most demanded for the customers from 5 provided. According to the partners who answered this question (53%), will attract the greatest interest of customers Office 365 also 1C in a cloud.

Plans for the future

Survey results show that about 50% of partners of Axoft consider clouds as one of the most perspective directions for business development in modern conditions. According to forecasts of Axoft, for a year of existence of a cloud platform of AxoftCloud not less than 120 partners will join new model of sales. It is going to cover more than 18 thousand jobs and to try that every tenth sale represented a bundle from two and more services. At the same time presumably more than a half of sales will be performed in regions.

AxoftCloud

AxoftCloud is the automated platform which is the aggregator performing functions of connection, setup, prolongation of subscriptions. Official start of the platform will take place in the fall of 2016.

AxoftCloud as the new direction of business of the distributor will help partners of Axoft to solve a number of the problems connected with promotion of clouds in IT market. First, the speech about billing. Secondly, the distributor will undertake a problem of formation of the "correct" packaged services – bundles which would meet needs of final customers. And, at last, the distributor will act for the partner as the assistant in rendering related services: installation, setup, migration, expanded technical support, consulting.

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