Welcome to episode 104. In a crowded competitive cloud world, it’s important to stand out and attract customers, but how should partners compete against commercial Hyperscale clouds when this is typically what customers will measure you against? In this episode, Alfredo Santana and I discuss some of the important aspects of differentiation, how you can level-set the conversation with your customers and how to clearly articulate the value your cloud brings.
We often hear from Cloud Providers that it is difficult to compete when commercial clouds are often able to offer cheaper services, but your cloud is not an apples-for-apples comparison, there are many additional capabilities you bring to the table over and above just the infrastructure. Indeed, even competing at the infrastructure level is quantifiable, with a vSphere hypervisor you can reduce your downtime, you can offer out-of-the-box availability with vMotion, you can negate noisy neighbour concerns and you can provide a premium SLA and support line to customers. All of these things (and much more, e.g. performance) should be used in conversations with customers to detail why a VMware Cloud is different and how customers can and should use commercial clouds, but in the right way.
Commercial clouds have their place, they provide excellent infrastructure services and convenience, but often can be confused with the ‘only option’. Customers are often swayed by the ease of doing business with commercial cloud but must consider the costs, availability, performance, elasticity, skills required, and support available to use such solutions. Cloud Providers can help customers achieve the right application execution venue for their estates and provide support, typically over all the cloud options, making this a great choice for customers with multi-cloud or hybrid cloud needs.
Watch this Feature Friday to listen to just some of the differentiating factors you already have in your cloud and how to message these to potential customers.
