The cloud promises partners the ability to offer an even better and more cost-effective service level to their customers, while gaining access to exciting possibilities such as increased profitability and additional revenue streams.

Looking first at cost reduction for the customer (something all companies are considering today), migration to the cloud means consumption-based billing, which translates into OPEX as opposed to CAPEX.

It’s not only more cost effective however. The cloud also allows partners to offer improved service levels to their customer.

A great example of this is the ability for partners to manage systems remotely and provide their customers with up-to-date usage reports. It’s a vastly more efficient way of servicing customers, doing away with the need for a resource to be on site, monitoring customer systems.

This results in improved customer engagement and retention – as partners are able to provide more cost-effective service to customers and pass those savings on to their customers.

This in turn frees up budget and encourages further customer investment into cloud services.

Besides this, the recent local launch of the Microsoft Azure datacentres in Cape Town and Johannesburg have made the move even more appealing. This launch not only offers users reduced latency, but presents the benefit of being able to keep valuable data inside the country, while remaining compliant.

The great news is, you don’t have to know everything about the cloud to start a cloud business.

Tarsus on Demand has spent over five years developing a partner engagement model that assists you in building a cloud offering that’s ideally suited to your clients’ needs, allowing you to – as and when your abilities allow – fine-tune and optimise according to demand.

This provides you with far greater scope to improve your customer retention and share of wallet, while scaling up at your own pace.