The march towards digital infrastructure and digital business adaptation has just begun, and it’s a journey that, to date, has been fraught with challenges — the brunt of which end users have had to carry when faced with ill-fitting cloud solutions that start to cost their business more than what they bargained for.
A cloud partnership: VMware and Strategix
A very real solution to this issue is for local businesses to turn to local cloud provider partners to help them better map out their cloud journeys, define their cloud real estate needs, and enable them to take back control of their cloud.
“We have partnered with VMware to enable us to deliver cloud services to customers off a platform they know and at a cost they can control. It is the perfect mix for customers who have been burnt by ill-fitting cloud solutions but still understand the value of hosting workloads in the cloud,” says Liezl van Staden, solutions sales manager at Strategix.
Within the Strategix model, the company leverages its VMware partnership to facilitate and ensure that customers get the best skills to help them adapt to the cloud and digital transformational journey while meeting their needs to delight their own customers.
Watch an interview with Strategix’s Liezl van Staden and VMware’s Sumeeth Singh conducted by journalist Arthur Goldstuck:
“As a vendor, our role is to provide our partners with the technologies their customers need and assist with ensuring that these solutions are delivered at a price point they can afford. This is the secret behind the success of our cloud provider partners like Strategix,” says Sumeeth Singh, cloud provider business head at VMware sub-Saharan Africa.
It is a straightforward evolution for partners like Strategix, who, in the early days of virtualisation, helped customers build their on-premises data centres, and can now help customers evolve to the cloud. Being a VMware Cloud Verified partner allows Strategix to assist those customers who still want to keep part of their business on-prem by offering them a hybrid model where their on-prem environment seamlessly connects to the on-prem one.
DNA of a good cloud partner
According to Singh, becoming a VMware Cloud Verified partner requires commitment from a partner and a certain amount of investment into training, upskilling and resourcing their teams. These are all steps that Strategix has taken, and Singh says its plethora of certifications helped it make an easy transition to a trusted cloud provider.
“Being VMware Cloud Verified allows us to make the cloud a reality for our customers. But it’s a continual learning and engagement process for our business. We need to constantly engage with customers on their business operating model, work with them to understand the different paths to the cloud, what they need from the cloud and how to deliver this for them,” adds Van Staden.
Watch | Cloudy with a Chance of VMware – episode 1
The first step? In this new agile world, understanding a customer’s strategy and business needs, and how they will modernise the applications they seek, is critical. Strategix aligns cloud services that extend to technical capabilities, cloud security and cloud cost management for end customers when this is done.
“As a VMware partner, we don’t have to convince our clients to pursue the cloud. Instead, we get straight to work designing a consumption-based multi-cloud business operating model that supports the client’s desire for a private cloud that can connect to any hyperscaler if needed,” she says.
Modern apps: containers and Kubernetes
But it’s not just building clouds that guarantee success. According to Van Staden, it’s essential to have your finger on the pulse of new technologies like containers and Kubernetes. Containers “sit smack bang in the middle of the digital transformation journey, where businesses are in the throes of embracing a fail-fast, fail-forward mentality”.
Containers make it easy for customers to split applications into little segments to allow for changes and functionality to take their course and meet the current demands/trends in the application model used.
“Cloud partners play a critical role in offering value by delivering skills that can support application modernisation through the deployment of containers and Kubernetes. In the case of Strategix, they are positioned to provide end customers with a unified platform to host three-tier applications and develop containers through their VMware validated cloud and the VMware Kubernetes platform Tanzu,” states Singh.
Future of cloud
According to Van Staden, the future of the cloud lies in how quickly businesses can modernise their technology and applications — ultimately the digital assets that lead their digital transformation.
In a nutshell, the cloud landscape is a complex space where understanding business models comes into play. Cloud service providers are working tirelessly to meet the demands of their customers by providing tailored models that meet their business, cost, optimisation and agility needs.
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