How to sell cloud services: demonstrating the value of Azure to customers
For various reasons, cloud services can be a key element of expanding as a business. Moving away from on-prem may seem like a no-brainer to you, but to your customers, the value of it may need a little more explanation.
Read on if you want to learn how to sell cloud services and why Azure can be the right choice.
Cloud benefits: why Azure is good for business
Microsoft Azure offers its users three main benefits that any business would be hard-pressed to turn down. They are as follows.
Cost savings
In place of on-premise, Azure offers significant cost reduction. In many cases, businesses have seen up to sixty percent in savings when choosing cloud storage.
Scalability
Azure lets you easily expand or contract your cloud resources in line with demand. You may have changes in computing requirements due to seasonal work. You might suddenly win a boatload of new business. Or you may need more computing resources for peaks in dev/test environments.
Security and maintenance
You don’t need nearly the same level of commitment to maintenance and security when Azure handles it for you. Their security is of a standard any business would be happy with, leaving you to focus on more important business tasks.
Cloud outlook: from the “why” to the “how”
Once prospects have understood why they might want a cloud solution – answered above – they’ll then need to imagine how it might be implemented. This can be intimidating due to a migration’s perceived complexity. This can also be compounded by the common misconception that a migration has to be a large, all-or-nothing operation. Assure your client that it won’t be anything of the sort, before assessing what the appropriate type of Azure project is for the customer. This will involve identifying ideally one or more concrete workloads that Azure can improve upon.
Five easy paths to The Cloud
If your customers are now asking, then here are five ways you can make The Cloud happen for them easily.
Azure lift and shift
This is a straightforward data migration. The data will be moved as is, to the cloud, so that it’s available off-premise. As many Azure VMs can be created for the data as needed.
Cloud databases
The Cloud here can serve as your data warehouse, allowing you to build databases freely and easily with zero scaling issues. Customer data will be offered multiple layers of data protection, namely data encryption and auditing.
Hybrid storage and disaster recovery
Maybe a customer doesn’t want to go full cloud just yet. Maybe it also makes sense to always have some data stored onsite. Whether it’s for regular storage or to act as a backup in a disaster scenario, going part cloud can be a great starting point for many customers.
Websites
Azure can be a great way to affordably host your websites. If a customer is looking to quickly build, deploy, and manage it easily then Azure’s great customer service, performance, massive bandwidth, etc. can all be helpful.
ISV apps
Customers may be looking to build and test. Azure provides everything needed to manage any dev/test environment; it helps you stick to budget targets, eliminate waste, make quick changes, and much more.
Giacom’s 3 Azure Readiness packages
If you think you now know how to sell cloud services and you’re ready to start offering Azure to your customers, then Giacom can help you in three different ways. Our “Done for You” package can handle everything, zero cloud experience is required from your end. Our “You Steer, We Supply” package puts you in the driving seat, whilst we stick to supplying the technology. And finally, our “Combined Knowledge” package is a bit of both; a bit of help from us, a bit of steering from you.