EMC has told partners they must make a decision on cloud computing within 36 months to stay relevant to customers.
Speaking at an event in Sydney, EMC general manager partner and alliances, David Henderson, said the call was far from melodramatic.
“You can’t be passive because your customers aren’t going to let you be passive. If you don’t have a position on cloud or managed services you’re going to become very, very quickly, in four to 36 months, irrelevant to your customer base,” Henderson said.
EMC has been pushing the cloud mantra for some time and came out in April with a cloud computing-focused high-end Symmetrix storage array based on Intel's x86 quad-core processors that integrates VMware's APIs to automate the provisioning of storage for virtual machines.
Henderson claimed while many companies are dramatically slashing IT staff numbers they are increasing data storage and IT requirements, and are looking to the cloud and managed services to maintain quality of service.
“This is such a great time for partners because customers are open to listening. They’ve been asked to look for a better way of doing this, a more cost effective way of doing this. The partners out there, the ones who are brave enough to build their businesses during the economic crisis will excel in this environment,” he said.
Gartner recently released a report estimating that worldwide cloud services revenue will not only surpass $US56.3 billion this year but, perhaps more telling, will surge to just more than $US150 billion in 2013.
Fellow analyst firm, IDC, also predicted global cloud services spending will increase almost three-fold in the next three years and reach $US42 billion by 2012.
The analyst group’s latest Asia-Pacific survey found 11 per cent of respondents already consumed cloud-based solutions. Forty-one per cent are either piloting or are considering incorporating cloud services into their businesses, and only 8 per cent of respondents believe cloud computing is mostly vendor hype.
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