Techaisle Blog

It would be unusual to find a “Chief Strategy Officer” or an equivalent group dedicated solely to long-term planning within a small business, or even inside most midmarket enterprises. For the most part, a small team of executives shares responsibility for both charting the company’s direction and managing its daily operational activities. This can make it difficult for SMBs to separate the strategic from the tactical – but it has the advantage of ensuring that ‘big picture’ priorities are reflected in the day-to-day actions taken by the management team.

This direct, visceral link between business imperatives and daily activities has some interesting implications for IT suppliers. Because the business decision maker (BDM) is often responsible for IT-related decisions, the IT supplier needs to ensure that its messaging is relevant to BDM ‘care-abouts’ – and because the BDM is often the source of both strategic and tactical direction, it is important for the IT supplier to root marketing messages and activity in an understanding of how their offerings, and/or the solutions in which their offerings are positioned, address the high-level objectives of the SMB customer.

Why Analytics?

Candid conversation with Dell Cloud-Client Computing chief strategist

Jeff McNaught, Executive Director & Chief Strategy Officer, Dell Cloud Client-Computing and co-inventor of Wyse thin client had a candid conversation with Techaisle on his new product initiatives, focus on security, building solutions for small and medium businesses and renewed attention to channel partners. Jeff is deeply involved in software solutions which includes partner software - Citrix, Microsoft and VMware and is responsible for the cloud-client business which includes devices that Dell build’s exclusively for Citrix or VMware as well as new products and software security offerings. One of his major new initiatives includes simplifying and securing virtual workspaces better than anyone else.

Dell VDI converging on security, cost, complexity and channels

Based on extensive primary research with SMBs and the channel partners, Techaisle forecasts the US SMB VDI market to be US$13 billion in 2020 as VDI penetration increases to 34 percent from the current 26 percent and an increase in number of seats from users who have already deployed VDI. Most of the midmarket firms that have invested in VDI are still experimenting with the technology, and most small businesses are still several years away from even this level of preliminary adoption.

The allure of VDI is clear – but the technology itself and the path to realizing its benefits is still mysterious to many small and midmarket businesses. Techaisle research shows that there is a need for VDI vendors to embark on a messaging exercise that includes - real-world examples of successful deployment of VDI, ease of VDI implementation with the least pain for SMBs & simplification of understanding VDI technology by removing fear and complexity.

Over the last two years Dell has been trying to build a momentum to remove the mystery and reduce deployment complexity. Along the way it has had more successes than missteps and it seems that Dell has reached a stage where it reasonably understands the needs of the end-customers and how to work with channel partners to win business and deploy solutions. Dell has architected multiple VDI solution delivery models for SMBs of all sizes and levels of technology adoption.

Techaisle’s detailed survey on Hybrid Cloud Adoption trends covering small, midmarket and enterprise firms shows that although Amazon AWS has established its initial presence within the US businesses, Microsoft Azure is quickly becoming the cloud platform of choice.

Microsoft Azure, a public cloud computing platform, is a growing collection of integrated cloud services that includes analytics, computing, database, mobile, networking, storage and web. Microsoft Azure initially focused strictly on PaaS but has now entered into IaaS market and launched a technical preview of Azure Stack, a platform designed to allow business to deploy an on-premise private cloud and manage a hybrid cloud environment. Microsoft Azure offers Hyper­-V-­virtualized multi-tenant compute with multi-tenant storage along with many additional IaaS and PaaS capabilities, including object storage and a CDN, Azure Marketplace which offers various third party software and services and Azure ExpressRoute that meets the colocation needs of various small and medium businesses.

The respondents for the survey were CIOs, CSOs, CTOs, VP of IT, Director of IT, Senior manager of IT as well as key business decision makers responsible or influential in adopting cloud platforms within their organizations.

Businesses cited many different reasons as to why Microsoft Azure is becoming a platform of choice.

The rigor in data collection, the depth in data analysis and the accuracy in forward looking insights that Techaisle brings in its small business & midmarket research has extended to enterprise. Techaisle’s US Enterprise Cloud Adoption Trends provides an in-depth and definitive look into the state of cloud adoption within large businesses.

1. Only 18% of US enterprises have mature cloud adoption and are optimizing usages; 36% have a cautious approach to cloud. Smaller size large enterprises have reached maturity stage whereas larger sized enterprises have ad hoc approach to cloud
2. In 92% of US enterprises, IT has a voice on the Board and helps drive the direction of the business rather than business deciding IT needs
3. Top IT challenge is implementing new strategic IT applications to improve organization’s competitiveness; 74% believe that investments in cloud increases their competitiveness
4. Greatest benefit of cloud is the ability to launch new products and services
5. 61% want seamless integration with on-premise systems
6. For 65% of US enterprises, security and regulatory compliance is the biggest challenge in developing strategies for cloud adoption
7. In 60% of enterprises data sovereignty and privacy are preventing acceleration of cloud
8. 75% of US enterprises have adopted Hybrid cloud but the largest penetration growth is expected in the use of public cloud
9. 74% are using Amazon AWS but Microsoft Azure is not far behind at 65%
10. 20% of US enterprises use all three types of cloud deployment – private, public and hybrid but the future looks very different

The research deliverable covers several topics including:

• Top 10 Enterprise IT challenges & business issues
• Enterprise Cloud adoption maturity – ad hoc to mature
• Greatest benefits of using Cloud
• Factors driving cloud adoption strategy
• Key attributes of a good cloud solution
• Challenges in developing strategies for cloud adoption
• Factors preventing Enterprises from accelerating cloud adoption
• Current & Planned adoption of services, type of deployment & workloads
• Current & planned cloud applications
• Enterprise cloud best practices - hybrid cloud, hybrid IT
• Enterprise cloud security best practices
• Use of public cloud within enterprises
• Benefits of Public Cloud adoption
• Top drivers of Public Cloud adoption
• Key challenges in implementing public cloud
• Workloads being transferred to Public Cloud
• Key Industry segments using Public Cloud services to derive its benefits
• Types and brands of public Cloud platform being used - Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM SoftLayer
• Comparative analysis of AWS, Azure, Google, SoftLayer
• Influencing the Cloud buyer, mapping the buyer’s journey
• Influencing the C-Suite

The Techaisle research contains a wealth of data that marketers can use to understand cloud adoption within the US enterprises and build IT buyer-centric marketing initiatives.