Monday Morning Impact – March 11
Canalys: Worldwide Cloud Spending to Grow 20% in 2024
Worldwide cloud infrastructure services expenditure grew 19% year-on-year in Q4 2023 to reach $78.1 billion, an increase of $12.3 billion. For full-year 2023, total cloud infrastructure services spending grew 18% to $290.4 billion, up from $247.1 billion in 2022.
According to Canalys, the influence of enterprise IT optimization on the cloud services market is falling, with more customers expanding their commitments with hyperscalers in anticipation of increased consumption requirements. Cloud migration efforts are picking up again, alongside a surge in new demand, particularly in the widespread adoption of AI applications. Hyperscalers are steadily ramping up investments in generative AI, expecting that harnessing its capabilities will catalyze new opportunities in cloud consumption. In 2024, Canalys expects global cloud infrastructure services spending to increase by 20%, compared with 18% in 2023.
In Q4 2023, the top three cloud providers – AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud – jointly grew by 21% and accounted for 66% of total spending. In Q4, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud saw a strong resurgence in revenue growth, both exceeding 25% once again. With 30% growth, Microsoft significantly outpaced the market and continues to close the gap on AWS. Market leader AWS saw an uptick in growth compared with previous quarters, but an increase of 13% year on year remains behind the trajectory of both Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
“AWS has been slower than its key competitors to make AI advances, which may explain why its growth is not accelerating as rapidly as that of Azure and GCP,” said analyst Yi Zhang. “The integration of generative AI into mainstream software products is accelerating, potentially leading to quicker commercialization of generative AI applications. Google recently introduced its rebranded Gemini large language model into Workspace applications, such as Gmail and Docs. At the same time, Microsoft launched Copilot for Microsoft 365 last November, embedding its generative AI platform into Word, Excel, and other office applications.”
Canalys defines cloud infrastructure services as those services that provide infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service, either on dedicated hosted private infrastructure or shared public infrastructure. This excludes software-as-a-service expenditure directly but includes revenue generated from the infrastructure services being consumed to host and operate them.
Channel Impact®
This trend underscores the need for channel partners to fully differentiate themselves in this highly competitive market.
Sophos Rolls Out New Partner Care Offering
Sophos has announced the launch of “Partner Care,” a new offering in its global partner program featuring a 24×7 team of experts who handle non-sales related questions and operational support for the company’s SMB-focused channel partners.
Sophos Partner Care offers a single point of contact for quoting, navigating the partner portal, addressing licensing queries, Not-For-Resale (NFR) requests, and other partner queries.
“Based on our decades of experience successfully supporting partners who sell to mid-market and small business organizations, we know that administrative and operational issues take away valuable time needed to build customers relationships, pursue prospects and close new business deals,” said Kendra Krause, senior vice president of global channels and small business sales at Sophos. “Partner Care reinforces Sophos’ longstanding strategy to be ‘channel-best,’ which is our commitment to provide partners with optimal, conflict-free revenue and profitability opportunities, curated training and support, and advanced security solutions that defend customers from data breaches, ransomware and other debilitating cyberattacks.”
To help further partners and MSPs with their awareness of critical industry issues, Sophos provides real-time and historical threat intelligence from its Sophos X-Ops unit, a cross-functional team of more than 500 Sophos cybersecurity experts who help partners and MSPs address customers’ questions and concerns about the latest ransomware, vulnerabilities and attacks circulating in the news.
To help streamline varying technologies within customers’ environments, Sophos also recently added a Veeam integration to its Sophos MDR and XDR solutions.
In addition to Partner Care, Sophos is currently offering an additional 5% reward on top of a deal registration discount for partners selling Sophos Managed Detection and Response (MDR). This expires March 31, 2024.
The Sophos Partner Care and additional partner enhancements are immediately available exclusively through the Sophos Global Partner Program.
Channel Impact®
The offering is designed to speed up response times for Sophos partners and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) needing assistance with administrative and operational tasks, freeing them up to focus on selling and securing their customers with Sophos’ portfolio of managed services and endpoint, network, email, and cloud security solutions.
N-able Expands Technology Alliance Program, Adding New Vendor Alliances to Open Ecosystem Built for MSPs
N-able, Inc., a Burlington, Massachusetts-based remote management, and security software company, has added new vendor alliances to its Technology Alliance Program (TAP) for MSPs.
The new relationships include integrations with SaaS Alerts, which allows MSPs to detect and automate the remediation of SaaS security threats using a multi-tenant platform supporting Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, Slack, Dropbox, Okta, and Duo.
In addition, integrations with Actifile enable MSPs to enter the data security and risk management in Actifile’s platform, illustrating the monetary value of current data risks alongside the MSP’s existing cyber security approach and deliver protection against potential financial loss.
Enclave provides a modern replacement for corporate VPNs designed to make it simple for MSPs to build a secure, reliable, and responsive network over their customers’ current network. With this integration, N-able partners can offer Zero Trust Network Access.
Auvik SaaS Management delivers cloud-based SaaS monitoring and management software for MSPs to be more efficient in client onboarding, employee onboarding and off-boarding, and QBR preparation for SaaS while enabling visibility, management, and security of their client’s SaaS applications.
“We believe our open ecosystem is a powerful differentiator for MSPs, providing a combination of collaboration, enablement, and innovation while delivering flexibility and value to our vendors and MSPs worldwide,” said David Weeks, N-able’s VP of Partner Experience. “As part of N-able TAP, vendors are well-positioned to support and strategically engage with the global MSP ecosystem, including 25,000 MSPs who trust N-able as their partner.”
Channel Impact®
The program brings technology companies together to further develop and integrate their solutions with N-able, thereby helping them to serve their customers with more flexibility and choice.
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