So What Does It Mean to Be Born in the Cloud?

Per Techopedia, Born in the Cloud refers to a specific type of cloud service that does not involve legacy systems, but was designed only for cloud delivery. This category of cloud services is instructive in changing how companies view reliance on cloud vendor.

To us, Born in the Cloud means that a business invented itself in the public cloud. The business systems are all hosted in public cloud IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS platforms. The financial model for the business was designed around a pay-as-you go model and the services provided are cloud-centric.

Many Born in the Cloud business are now household names, and have even become over-used tech examples of cloud excellence. These are companies like Netflix, Uber and AirBnB. But there are many other emerging Born in the Cloud companies that you may not have heard about. Alex Konrad of Forbes reported that “Online survey manager SurveyMonkey, e-mail marketer Mailchimp, website builder Squarespace , app manager AppDynamics and another payments company, Adyen, round out the Forbes Cloud 100 top 10.” These are not small companies. They are using the cloud as a way to move extremely fast in a very competitive market.

The Market

It is commonly understood that cloud is redefining IT. Over 90% of companies are using some mix of public, private and hybrid cloud solutions. According to Gartner, over 60% of companies have moved 33% or more of their infrastructure to cloud products thus far.

And the reasons for fast cloud adoption are simple. The consumerization of IT services makes it easier for business units and developers to start small and start fast. The pay-as-you-go consumption model makes it safe to try new things. This is good for businesses trying to get lean and get fast.

The Challenge for Traditional Resellers

But this shift to the public cloud presents a challenge for a traditional Value Added Reseller’s business model. They were built on big deals, big margins and big support from the big OEMs.

Because hardware isn’t dead (yet) and most of the Enterprise IT spend is still going towards on-premise infrastructure, the traditional VARs are spending most of their time and effort chasing those deals.

But the cloud is coming, and the cloud business is different. The margins are small, there are no “big deals” and the cloud services providers certainly don’t make big cash investments in their resellers. The business models of traditional infrastructure sales and the public cloud business are largely incompatible.

Lean is the Answer

A born in the cloud reseller is better positioned to serve its customers’ cloud needs because they aren’t dividing their attention. They invest only in solutions and services that customers will value. They eat their own dog food and use lower-cost, pay-as-you go SaaS solutions to operate their business, and then leverage a large, virtual team of resources to serve the needs of their customer while keeping costs low.

So How Does a Lean, Born in the Cloud VAR Truly Help its Customers

The Born in the Cloud VAR is designed to serve customer needs in the cloud age. There are no extra costs, no huge markups, and full transparency. The result is that customers get highly efficient, highly focused expertise that they can use to transform their own businesses using the public cloud.