Aptum CEO: Mid-market enterprises want to be cloud agnostic

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Susan Bowen reveals how the cloud hosting provider is shedding its legacy reputation and her predictions for 2021

       Mid-market businesses want multi-cloud models because they do not want to be beholden to a specific cloud partner, claimed Aptum chief exec Susan Bowen.

The managed hosting and cloud services provider recently launched its Cloud Impact Study which revealed some surprising

data on cloud adoption from mid-market enterprises. The report - which surveyed 400 IT professionals across the UK and North America across a variety of verticals - found that 71 per cent of respondents experience negative effects due to the rate of their cloud transformation. Bowen said that the reports of easy cloud journeys to the cloud as a result of the coronavirus pandemic have largely been in regard to SMBs, while mid-market enterprises find that they need something more adaptable and that fits their particular requirements that public cloud cannot fulfil. “Mostly what we see published in the press about the ease of going to the cloud fits within the smaller SMB space where I think it is a lot easier to be cloud native and to build your solutions in the cloud,” she elaborated. “If you are a mid-market enterprise customer, though, anything you build new in the cloud, it tends to be designed and built to maximise the potential of that cloud, and there are unique situations where you might be building new applications today that are really not fit for public cloud consumption. For example, if you have strong compliancy or data residency needs because you’re delivering in a public sector situation. “Being able to do that multi-cloud is really important because what mid-market organisations want right now is to not be beholden to any one particular architecture or infrastructure - they want to be agnostic. That’s what we’re seeing and certainly how we’re responding.” Elsewhere in the report, 62 per cent of respondents revealed that they were overwhelmed by the complexity and abundance of choice which they considered a hindrance when choosing their cloud strategy. Bowen said that Aptum’s own transformation has helped their ability to guide customers in formulating their own cloud strategies. The managed service provider has changed its go-to-market strategy to focus on business outcomes and solutions and data infrastructure, as well as reorganising the structure of its teams to ensure that everyone knows what the client wants to achieve. “The aim for most organisations is they want to have a cost-effective cloud solution and our response is that we are working on making sure that resources and skills are there to help the customer design, plan and build. Then we’re making sure that we are able to offer multi cloud, so they have those choices to fit the best solution for their data needs,” she explained. “We’ve seen examples out there where some organisations will get sold this concept of public cloud and they shift 100 per cent of their workloads to public cloud and their costs can go up three or four-fold by doing that because they’re no longer in control of how their data is being accessed or stored or managed and controlled.” Canada-headquartered Aptum was previously a part of the Cogeco telco organisation but wasdivested last year. Since then the company has been trying to shed its legacy teclo reputation to focus on its MSP business, Bowen said. “We have been relinquishing some of our hard assets and have really just focused on this vision of enabling a concept of data infrastructure,” she stated. “Our focus is to be a true hybrid and multi-cloud managed service provider on a global scale, we are shifting from a legacy, heavy asset-based organisation into a customised, solution-focused company - we want to be a true managed service provider.” Aptum has seen double-digit growth in its cloud and colocation businesses since last year and has also launched a professional services line of business to accelerate customers' digital transformation journeys which Bowen described as an “offensive play” in the marketplace. Bowen predicted that the demand for cloud that the industry has seen this year will continue to grow in 2021 and that MSPs need to be able to show customers their long-term prospects rather than the immediate challenges being presented to them. “I expect that cloud demand to continue and that the impact of COVID will have accelerated the decisions that organisations need to make to remain nimble and adaptable,” she speculated. “For the channel, I think that organisations and managed service providers that need to be able to show that they can help take customers on the data journey. There’s also the opportunity to really help organisations to focus on the solutions first, as opposed to solving the current immediate tech issues that they have in front of them.”

Author: marian.mchugh@incisivemedia.com(Marian McHugh)

Date: 2020-12-02

URL: https://www.channelweb.co.uk/news/4024377/aptum-ceo-mid-market-enterprises-cloud-agnostic

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