Cloud computing adoption is not as simple as it sounds. Despite all the marketing pitches made by some cloud vendors, such as “Just sign up and you are ready to go – it’s that simple,” bringing your business to the cloud is not that simple; what you have heard or see is just the tip of the iceberg.
Things are more complex, especially when you are working with multiple cloud service providers. When you working with several cloud vendors, you are essentially managing multiple relationship.
Moreover, you want their services to be as customized as possible, so they can support your business operations. You might also want to integrate several cloud services, so that cloud service management will become more, well, manageable.
But how to handle all that? Should you establish a whole new department that will manage all of those issues? How much resources you are willing to make available just to make your chosen cloud services work well? The answer is no. There is a solution and the solution is called the cloud services brokerage or CSB.
What is a cloud services brokerage (CSB)?
Here’s a good definition of CSB given by Daryl Plummer of Gartner, Inc. on Forbes.com:
A cloud services brokerage is a third party company that adds value to cloud services on behalf of cloud service consumers. Their goal is to make the service more specific to a company, or to integrate or aggregate services, to enhance their security, or to do anything which adds a significant layer of value (i.e. capabilities) to the original cloud services being offered.
Again, a very good definition, as Daryl explained all the essence of CSB, which all lead to a new critical success factor for your business: A more powerful and valuable cloud services.
CSB has extensive experience in working with multiple cloud service providers and many possible client scenarios. So, instead of spending much resources on making things work like well oiled machines, businesses can now leverage solutions offered by CSB, allowing you to focus on other important aspects of your business.
Should I use CSB’s solution?
The answer is a bit cliche – it’s all up to you and your business needs. As long as you can handle the complexity of the cloud services your business is signing up with, you might want to keep things in-house.
However, be sure to take into account that unless you have cloud integration experts working for your company, doing everything yourself would create a big mess that would be very expensive to clean up. Probably the safer bet for you is to use the right CSB solution, so that you can leverage your resources better and better-manage your risks.
So, how about you? Will you go in-house or hire a CSB solution provider?
