Ensuring your clients’ data is secure and readily recoverable in the event of a breach or natural disaster is a top priority. Recent headlines showing the damage that ransomware and natural disasters, like Hurricane Harvey can inflict upon a network and its assets should motivate you to educate your clients to ensure backup policies are in place and effective.

As an IT solution provider, it’s your company reputation on the line for a seamless, working customer experience. Cloud computing makes the user experience from the road to the desk seamless, but can prove challenging for the IT solution provider to maintain this standard. In an effort to future-proof your business, here are five ways to diversify your cloud offering to ensure operational stability, customer loyalty, and maintain a competitive edge.

Reselling cloud solutions seems like a simple task. It’s just another product to promote, right? Not quite. Many businesses, like you, have already started offering cloud solutions to their clients, because the client asked for it. Now it’s time to consider promoting it as part of your offering. Before you can successfully market your new cloud offering, consider these six areas as a guide to determine if you’re truly cloud ready.

As a cloud solution provider, getting control of monthly recurring revenue processes is paramount to successfully scale your business. Some vendors offer cloud-based services in an annual pre-pay, but to cloud purists, this isn’t truly a cloud model. Outside of the frequency that invoices are received, there are two common ways a cloud product is billed to resellers and/or clients: subscription and consumption.

Transitioning from traditional on-premise IT systems to cloud-based services presents several impacts on daily business for you and your clients. While there are many benefits for a customer, you must also consider the impact it may have on your current processes and stakeholders. You want to be sure that you have enough cash to float the business during the transition period, as well as the correct metrics in place to gauge success.¹

On-premise or cloud backup solution? That is the question. 64% of IT pros say a data loss event is literally a life-or-death situation for their small business. Every minute that a system (or application) is down, your business is losing money and using 100% of its IT resources to get it back. With many options available to build your proactive and reactive plans, here are four reasons why you would never consider a cloud backup solution.

You’ve probably heard about Microsoft’s Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program and how it’s the wave of the future in delivering Microsoft Office 365 to your customers. However, the key to success in delivering productivity solutions via cloud services takes more than just a new program…it requires a deeper commitment to solution selling than ever before. 

We have made three exciting enhancements to StreamOne, the platform that powers Tech Data’s award-winning Cloud Solutions Store. We released the enhancements to ensure the global platform performs even more efficiently as you learn, buy and manage your cloud subscriptions.

Do you feel that you should be marketing and promoting your company’s service offerings? Have you taken all the necessary steps to get started? Managed service providers (MSPs) don’t have to be marketing experts, but marketing is a necessary component to running a sustainable business with a consistent stream of new customer prospects. As a business owner, you want to be cost effective, and provide a positive customer experience to new prospects—and marketing is the key.