You’ve heard it many times before, and probably even once today in the office: the channel is changing – and fast. IT providers are now being forced to step out of the box they may have fit into in the past and diversify their offerings, mostly to service the changing needs of their current customers, while also working to attract a broader range of customers moving forward. They are experiencing new found internal pressures, such as generating new customers, managing vendor relationships and figuring out how to convert their current clients into managed service contracts that are profitable and sustainable.

This blog was contributed by Pam Miller, Research Director, IDC.

Business customers want in their business life the same techno logy advantages that they enjoy in their personal life. This includes paying for services as they use them.  If your electric bill was a flatfixed fee based on some arbitrary criteria created by your utility company you would most likely be unhappy, unless you had the biggest house with the most kids in your neighborhood. The same applies in the new cloud economy. Consumption pricing better matches utility to expense, and is rapidly becoming more important as SaaS services expand and use cases diversify.

Editor's Note: This blog was originally featured as a guest blog on The VAR Guy. To read articles similar to this one, visit The VAR Guy or visit our website.

Cloud computing, overall, is now well-established as a viable, even essential, element in how organizations use technology to achieve business goals. Challenges such as meeting the needs of users, deploying solutions to business needs faster and increasing demands on badly stretched internal IT teams are driving the discussion surrounding cloud computing.

It’s no secret that consumers today are evolving in the way they evaluate and buy products and services.  The evolution of the media industry and introduction of 3^rd platform has driven significant changes in the buying decisions of consumers today.  They are making their decisions more and more based on who can provide the best information accessible online coupled with a seamless buying experience and are often willing to for go price as the first priority. This is no different for consumers choosing their cloud offerings and services.

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When those located outside of the region discuss business in Latin America, one of three things happen. They have a basic understanding of the countries within the region, they’re well versed in the region and understand how the countries behave and their cultural and business differences, or none of the above – they believe that the countries within Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) all behave is one unit, with identical priorities and focuses.

It’s safe to say that cloud computing has turned out to be much more than just a buzz word. Cloud computing has changed the way customers consume infrastructure and applications and the way partners must sell services to their end users.

Editor's Note: This guest post was originally published by guest author, Ahmed Banafa. Ahmed is currently a lecturer at the College of Engineering at San Jose University and is a Five-time winner of instructor of the year award. Ahmed is also a contributor to LinkedIn, IBMCloud , IBM Big Data Analytics Hub, and HP Infrastructure Insights and has been published on MIT Technology Review, ComputerWorld, Livescience, Techonomy, and Openmind. Subscribe to his blog, New Trends in Hi Tech, or follow him on Twitter.

I’ve published a couple of different articles around the topic of how those looking at cloud solutions can evaluate cloud providers for target workloads, but thought it would be good to address the challenges that those face who might already be in the cloud. For this specific blog, I want to talk specifically about Amazon Web Services (AWS).

In today’s digital age, cloud computing has now become established as a viable, even essential element in how organizations use technology to achieve their business goals. With growing opportunities in the cloud including hybrid cloud and colocation, many organizations are reaping the benefits of transferring their workloads to outsourced, high-tech realty data center space, at a small fraction of the price – and adoption rates are soaring. Although, in Canada, this expansion of cloud computing and cloud services has opened up a deeper discussion around the security, privacy and protection of data and how it fits in with Canadian privacy laws, including the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).