Help Move Your Customers to the Private Cloud

Your customers know you want to talk to them about the private cloud – and they’re nervous. To their ears, building a private cloud sounds like the kind of beyond-our-atmosphere initiative that will bust budgets and deadlines without adequate return. You know better. You know that a private cloud can reduce capital spending, decrease IT workloads and increase agility. So, how do you explain this to your enterprise and small-to-medium-size business (SMB) customers before they shut you down? Alleviate their fears, and then explain the long-term benefits.

Below are five key points to discuss when you start private cloud conversations with customers:

• The private cloud is more than an infrastructure investment. Cost is likely one of your customer’s key concerns, so make sure you explain that deploying a private cloud is not only about the money your customer will invest, but also the returns he/she will see in the near and short-term. Private clouds drive down costs, improve customer service and provide a competitive advantage. All of those benefits lead to bottom-line improvements.
• The private cloud offers showback and costing models and ultimately translates to lower total cost of ownership. When your customers move to the private cloud, they will find it easier to monitor, measure and manage IT consumption. This increases productivity, since business users can provision their own resources as appropriate and IT teams can focus on more value-added activities. 
• The private cloud builds on the flexibility, agility and cost savings the company gained by moving to a virtual environment. The private cloud is not only the next, natural step in your customer’s virtualization journey; it is the chance to magnify all the benefits of virtualization and maximize the returns on existing investments. The speed, agility and simplification your virtualization customers see in their data center management and performance will intensify when they deploy private clouds.
• The selection of a private cloud management platform does not have to be a lengthy process. You can deliver the people, processes and technology customers need in order to implement infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). This starts with a private cloud management platform that aligns with the customer’s requirements and delivers all the features of IaaS: self-service provisioning, IT costing and showback, service catalogs, and more.
• The selection of the right solution will ensure that future private cloud capabilities are appropriate for the entire business. This is the moment to elevate your infrastructure conversation to one that focuses on competitive advantage and speed to market. Show customers that you understand their business needs, you’re familiar with their company roadmaps, and you can help them create private cloud foundations that will meet their needs now and in the future.

You know the benefits of the private cloud, and you know which of your customers can benefit most from moving their virtualized data centers to full-on IaaS environments. Convincing customers to see that, however, isn’t always easy. To make your private cloud discussions more productive, address the typical worries that hold enterprises and SMBs back from the cloud and demonstrate the long-term business benefits. If you can make a convincing case now, your customers will thank you later.

About the author:
Colin Jack is the lead systems engineer at Embotics Corporation overseeing cloud management educational efforts at local VMUGs and other customer events. Previously, Colin was the IT manager and systems administrator for a number of technology and telecommunication firms.