Power Your Customers’ Growth With Cloud Infrastructure Solutions

As the demand for secure, cost-efficient solutions and applications to store, manage, and share data and services rises dramatically, cloud computing has emerged as the champion in meeting this need. Today, 60% of corporate data is housed in the cloud, up by 50% since 2015. By 2033, the global cloud computing market is expected to reach USD 2.976 billion, growing at an average increase of 16.8% per year over the next nine years.

Cloud infrastructure is the powerhouse of this pivotal IT transformation, driven by the increasing need for scalability, agility and operational efficiency, and the drive among customers to mitigate the costs, skills, and time traditionally required to procure and manage their own infrastructure.

This isn’t just a shift. It's a sea change that's reshaping how businesses plan, procure, and manage their data infrastructure needs worldwide.

This article delves into the profound role cloud infrastructure plays for your customers, the market opportunity for you as an advisor, and how you can get started selling cloud infrastructure today.

What’s happening in cloud infrastructure

Although public clouds like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform currently capture two-thirds of the total spending on cloud infrastructure, private cloud options are also gaining in popularity.

The Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market is set for explosive growth, estimated to leap from $156.93 billion in 2024 to $738.11 billion by 2032. This surge is driven by the flexibility of cloud-based infrastructure services, and by businesses seeking cost-effective, scalable IT solutions to meet their growing infrastructure needs. Traditional on-premises storage servers and hardware alone often fall short in fulfilling these complex demands. In addition to allowing greater business agility, cloud-based infrastructure services offer lower cost, better security, and increased reliability. 

Why data center capacity and AI storage trends matter to your customers

Existing data center facilities are already maxing out their storage limits and estimates suggest that by 2027, the escalating storage demands generated by AI will more than double current data center storage requirements. As it stands today, the development timeline for new data centers has grown to three to five years—and more in some cases.

What this means for your customers

This rising global demand for data center capacity directly impacts the availability and cost of cloud services. This means that your customers need to plan well ahead of their expected data storage requirements to mitigate potential issues, including:

• Increased costs—Customers need to build potential cloud storage price increases into their IT budgets. Already, providers have increased pricing by 20-30% since last year

• Resource availability—Customers thinking about migrating workloads to the cloud should start early to avoid shortages

• Competitive positioning—Businesses need to ensure they have the necessary resources to support AI-driven initiatives and other competitive strategies

• Scalability—Customers need to make sure their cloud providers can scale resources as their needs grow

• Energy efficiency—Customers should consider providers that prioritize sustainable practices to align with their social responsibility goals

As an advisor, understanding these factors is vital to having focused discussions with your customers and ensuring you can help them make informed decisions.

The market for public, private, and hybrid cloud infrastructure

Public clouds

Managed by third-party providers, public clouds offer servers and storage over the Internet, sharing resources among multiple organizations. Public clouds are cost-efficient. Organizations don’t need to buy, manage, and maintain their own hardware and software and they can scale their use up or down according to demand.

The market for public clouds

Today, approximately 96% of organizations use a public cloud—80% of them as part of a hybrid cloud infrastructure—and 85% of companies use two or more cloud platforms.

Several factors are fueling the rapid growth in public cloud adoption on a global level: flexibility and cost-efficiency, and faster innovation and time-to-market. As a result, the worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow by a notable 14.1% between 2023 and 2030.

The top three leaders in this space—Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP)—capture over 65% of customer spending on cloud infrastructure services.

Private clouds

Private clouds, on the other hand, provide dedicated resources for a single organization or entity. They can be hosted on-site or by a third-party provider, but their services, infrastructure, and software are solely dedicated to one organization, maintained on a private network. This setup provides increased security and control, making it popular with government agencies, financial institutions, and other organizations that need tight control over business-critical operations and scalability. 

The market for private clouds

Private cloud options are gaining popularity and, as AI use proliferates, it will drive massive new requirements for data center storage and private cloud infrastructure. The private cloud market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.71% between 2023 and 2028. Data centers are already maxing out their capacity, and by 2027, demand is expected to double.

Hybrid clouds

Hybrid clouds combine the benefits of both private and public clouds, allowing data and applications to move between the two environments. Hybrid clouds provide a cost-effective solution that allows companies to seamlessly scale resources and only pay for extra computing power to meet fluctuating demand. Sensitive data can be kept in-house while other workloads are run on the public cloud. The result is a cost-effective solution that eliminates the need for significant capital expenditure and enables gradual migration to the cloud.

This model is especially relevant for organizations operating in highly regulated environments that need to meet specific regulatory or other data requirements.

The market for hybrid clouds

The hybrid cloud market is expected to reach USD $128 billion in 2024, a 22% increase over 2023. It’s notable that of the 96% of organizations that use a public cloud, 80% also use public clouds as part of a hybrid cloud infrastructure.

Each of these cloud models offers unique advantages and caters to specific business needs and constraints and AppDirect can help you choose the right solution to fit your customers’ particular requirements.

Why you should be selling cloud infrastructure

Businesses need help making the right infrastructure choices

For many companies, matching complex infrastructure options to their stringent requirements for privacy, compliance, security, and control can be overwhelming. Most SMBs lack the people and skills necessary for the task. And once they’ve settled on a solution, the processes related to billing, tracking and allocating cloud expenditures can be daunting.

As a result, many SMBs are changing the way they buy IT solutions. Increasingly, they’re choosing indirect selling relationships with managed service providers, system integrators, and telecommunications companies who can help them sort through the maze of options and implement, manage, and optimize their technology. They’re also looking for value-added services like integration support and onboarding, cybersecurity, and remote management of their IT environments.

Grow recurring revenues and gain a bigger share of your customers' wallet

As your customers look outside for this support, with help from AppDirect, you can capture all or most of this new business and help your customers adopt the right cloud infrastructure strategy, avoiding costly mistakes. 

Simplify technology procurement, integration, and management for your customers 

For advisors who want to expand beyond their traditional offerings, cloud infrastructure is essential to offering customers a fully integrated technology package. From energy, managed services, and connectivity, to security, managed services, SaaS, CX, and cloud infrastructure, you can meet all of your customers' technology needs from a unified catalog—all on the AppDirect marketplace.

The AppDirect cloud infrastructure portfolio

Selling IaaS through AppDirect offers you a streamlined way to help SMBs adopt cloud infrastructure services, including public, hybrid, and private clouds.

Public cloud solutions

AppDirect offers public cloud services from the big three hyperscalers—Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

As the largest public cloud provider, AWS sets the standard. Catering to a wide range of needs, it offers the highest number of services and more database options than most competitors, positioning it as a versatile choice for businesses of all sizes.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure provides tools that are popular among existing Microsoft customers who develop applications using the .NET framework or are heavy Microsoft tool users. With the broadest set of regional data centers, Azure offers the lowest latency and superior network availability.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

GCP, the third-largest IaaS provider in North America, is renowned for its best-in-class AI and machine-learning capabilities. Offering integration and developer access to familiar Google tools like their Google Maps API, GCP positions itself as a forerunner in AI-powered cloud solutions. 

All of these public cloud infrastructure providers offer the following benefits:

Cost-effective—Pay-as-you-go subscription fees, no physical data centers to maintain, generally the most affordable option

Maintenance-free—All hardware and software updates, security, and support are handled by the provider

Robust security—Global cybersecurity teams work to protect business assets and data

Scalability—Resources auto-scale in real-time as a company’s needs grow, reducing overhead costs associated with manual management

Data backup—Built-in redundancy, failover, backup, automatic logging, and monitoring to prevent data loss and ensure shorter recovery time

Private cloud solutions

For businesses requiring dedicated computing resources, our private cloud offerings provide a flexible and secure alternative to public clouds. AppDirect solutions engineers can recommend an infrastructure solution tailored to each customer’s requirements. This setup offers enhanced control and is ideal for large organizations or those with stringent security requirements.

Hybrid cloud solutions

AppDirect hybrid cloud offerings combine the benefits of both public and private clouds. Companies can leverage the scalability and cost-effectiveness of public clouds alongside the security and control of private clouds. This duality caters to businesses operating in highly regulated environments or those that need to meet specific regulatory or data requirements. 

Your key takeaway

Each of these offerings caters to specific business needs and market opportunities, enabling you to better serve your customers while uncovering new revenue streams.

Training and resources to get you started

AppDirect offers everything you need to confidently engage in discussions with your customers about their infrastructure needs.

Cloud infrastructure and data center sales training

We offer seven vendor-agnostic courses to equip you with the skills you need to sell cloud infrastructure from the AppDirect catalog.

Cloud Infrastructure and Data Center Sales 101: Master cloud computing sales with hands-on strategies to support customers with digital transformation, security and regulatory barriers. Learn to deliver impactful solutions that resonate with modern business needs and sustainability goals.

Cloud Infrastructure and Data Center Sales 201: Dive into the essentials of data center technology, from virtualization to hybrid cloud benefits and bare metal performance, to equip yourself with the tools for advising on cutting-edge cloud solutions.

These courses are available to anyone in the AppDirect Training Center. If you're an AppDirect advisor, log into your marketplace to directly access the program through that link. Otherwise, you can register as a guest.

Customer marketing toolkit

The Cloud infrastructure solution page provides access to essential marketing sources, including:

• Cloud infrastructure pitch deck

• Cloud infrastructure co-brandable data sheet

• Cloud infrastructure sales guide

• Corporate Technologies Group (CTG) case study

Podcast

For a lively discussion that delves into more technical detail, listen to our podcast Selling Infrastructure & Cloud Solutions, featuring AppDirect cloud infrastructure experts.