BOLT-ON SERVICES
Nailing Down the Best Solutions
Bolt-On services have become a staple of modern solutions as customers demand simplicity
As businesses’ journey into the cloud continues to grow deeper, the features and additional services they use on their platform of choice have also increased Be it in connectivity or customer-facing communications, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a business that uses a solution that is entirely created by one vendor. In fact, the art of reselling in recent times has been to take a solution and cater to specific markets with additional functionality. Another way to look at this though, as Rebecca Wettemann, CEO of Valoir points out, is the choice between investing in a range of solutions from one provider, or the best alternative on the market for what the business needs. “This really gets down to the best-of-breed versus suite argument,” said Wettemann. “There are parts of the communication stack, like analytics and workforce optimization, where a core vendor may have basic capabilities but companies are willing to invest in outside vendors that offer more specific capabilities or specific value.” The Dilemma A great example of these types of decisions that businesses are making is around multi-cloud. While it may make sense for the sake of ease to just go with one provider, the research would say that the decision is quite a conundrum.
According to a global survey from Vanson Bourne and VMware, nearly 1-out-of-5 organisations have realised the business value of multi-cloud, although 70 per cent currently struggle with the complexity that comes with it. At the same time, the vast majority of organisations (95%) agree that multi- cloud architectures are now critical to business success. Even more interesting is the discovery that 52% believe organisations that do not adopt a multi-cloud approach risk failure. Yet, on the other hand, Patrick Watson, Head of Research at Cavell Group says that “businesses are definitely looking for the complete package. “Our enterprise research shows that 66 percent prefer a single provider for communications technology. That just shows that they would generally rather not be buying the UC licence from one place and get the phones from another, they’d rather have just one supplier.” Rationalisation That simplification, or rationalisation as Wettemann described it, is not only appealing in the initial adoption phase but also when businesses audit the technology they use. Despite what Microsoft would have you believe, Teams is not the only platform employees log into, however as different departments have different needs, it’s natural for the services they take advantage of to also differ. “What we are seeing is a rationalisation in the space both as those core vendors build out their capabilities, either organically or by acquisition, and customers start to realise that maybe they bought a few too many bolt-ons and the cost of managing them is exceeding the benefit that they get from
Rebecca Wettemann CEO
valoir.com
1-out-of-5 organisations have realised the business value of multi-cloud, although 70 per cent currently struggle with the complexity that comes with it.
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