Co-seller models find increased appeal in the age of the cloud
The way IT vendors have historically sold products and services has revolved primarily around models where a channel partner either resold the product after acquiring it from the vendor or acted as an agent on behalf of the vendor. But,...
Customer loyalty to cloud and IT service providers is not all that high
It turns out that in terms of brand loyalty IT professionals are least loyal to cloud service providers (CSPs) and IT outsourcing/consulting partners. A survey of 535 IT professionals conducted by Spiceworks finds more than 70 percent of IT buyers are...
Most organizations still struggle with fundamentals of IT management
While there’s a lot of well-deserved focus on business and IT innovation these days, the fundamentals of delivering IT services never go away. In fact, a new survey published this week by Syncsort, a provider of data management software, indicates...
Digital assistants to become pervasive in 2018
The one thing made clear this week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is that digital assistants will soon be everywhere. Google, for example, used to the conference to showcase how Google Assistant with challenge rival digital assistant software from...
Digital business transformation emerges as top concern for business leaders
The most important thing any managed service provider needs to understand when wooing a new client is their state of mind. Not every customer has the same priorities. But, a recent survey of 728 business executives and board members conducted...
Awareness of GDPR rights builds slowly in the EU
The first major issue many IT organizations will confront in the new year is the need to comply with the General Data Protection Rule (GDPR) that goes into effect in the European Union (EU) in 142 days. Scheduled to go into...
Big Data analytics platforms in the cloud see wider adoption
A new report from Dresner Advisory Services suggests that managed Big Data analytics platforms based on instances of Hadoop delivered via the cloud gained significant traction in 2017. The research firm’s 2017 Big Data Analytics Market Study finds that instances of Hadoop...
Transition to VoIP solutions has some hang-ups to overcome
Voice-over-IP (VoIP) is at the root of many of the more advanced communications and collaboration applications that have been deployed in the past year. But a survey conducted jointly by Spiceworks and CenturyLink suggests there is plenty of room for...
Revenue growth rates rise sharply in 2017 across all classes of clouds
They say a flood lifts all boats, but given the revenue growth rates across the entire cloud computing sector, something more akin to a tsunami is occurring. A report issued this week by Jeffries, an investment banking firm, says the...
Digital business transformation expectations likely to lead to high turnover
Most IT leaders today are being asked by to perform a magic trick. On the one hand, they are being tasked with driving IT that will help materially reinvent the business, also known as digital business transformation. At the same...