Cloud migration projects are on the IT strategy of most organisations these days.
Now that the cloud market has reached maturity and the business benefits of cloud services have been proven, organisations who have not already started their cloud migrations are at very least planning to do so.
Customers are hesitant to move to the Cloud
There are however always the few organisations who are cautious and hesitant to make the move to cloud. Either because they would prefer to test the idea or because they do not really know where to start. That is where cloud backup services come in. They are an excellent way for organizations to test the waters before committing to a full-blown cloud migration project.
Cloud migrations, like any other projects, require planning which usually involve several steps which need to be completed before the actual project execution can begin. Consideration needs to be given to items such as which applications can be moved to cloud and which need to remain on-premise, which applications will be moved first, the dependencies between applications and how these will be met during the migration phase, what data will be migrated and where will it be stored etc.
All these questions can be very overwhelming for many organisations who simply just do not know where to start.
Backup Services are a great way to test the Cloud
As an MSP, selling online backup services is a great way to gain a foothold into organizations who want to begin their cloud migration journey but are hesitant to start.
There is no argument that backups are sacrosanct. They do however live on the periphery of standard IT operations and as such can be moved without impacting the rest of the operating IT environment.
This simple fact provides a unique opportunity to the MSP and the customer as it allows the customer to start testing the benefits of a cloud service without severely impacting their daily IT operational environment or their business.
Backup Services strengthen the MSP product portfolio
MSPs who do not currently offer cloud backup as part of their services portfolio can also use the opportunity to expand their product mix and relevance to existing customers.
The MSP business is generally built on a recurring revenue model obtained by billing customers a fixed fee each month for a set of agreed services. Adding cloud backups to your portfolio not only increases the monthly recurring revenue fee you are able to charge your customer, it also opens the door to lucrative project type work. These project revenues can be derived by managing and executing cloud backup projects, which if executed successfully can secure future cloud migration business from the customer.
Proving your Cloud skills is a barrier to entry for competitors
Furthermore, adding cloud backups to the MSP’s services portfolio not only increases recurring revenue and provides opportunities for project-based revenues, it also ensures potential competitors need to overcome a serious barrier to entry before gaining a foothold in the customer account.
After all, if you have proven your cloud migration skills, why would your customer want to get someone else to execute future cloud projects.
Every business is a potential customer
Ultimately, backup is a basic and immediate need for all businesses which infers that all businesses have some form of backup solution in place. As such an MSP looking to grow their portfolio and revenue has a large target market of potential customers.
Not only can the MSP gain revenues by migrating the customer to a cloud-based backup solution, they can become the customer’s trusted advisor for all cloud related services moving forward.
This gives you a competitive advantage and creates the opportunity of you being awarded any future cloud-based business due to the skills and expertise you have already demonstrated.
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