Helping partners float into the public cloud

Canadian solution providers looking to provide their clients with a public cloud computing offering, and hoping to keep their business when clients grow their business internationally, have a new option with Tenzing Managed IT Services‘ new public cloud offering.

Toronto-based Tenzing has partnered with OpSource, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based hosting provider, to launch a new public cloud offering. OpSource’s Cloud Partner Ecosystem provides software and tools that allow Tenzing to offer its reseller partners a public cloud solution that can be hosted across geographies depending on client needs, but managed through one interface and billed through one white label relationship between the reseller and their client.

Tenzing CEO Brian Shepard said this is the company’s first public cloud offering, building on its existing private cloud solutions, and meets a growing market need.

“There’s a lot of demand in the marketplace for cloud computing, and different products and different ways of applying the benefits it brings to bear,” said Shepard. “We’re very bullish. We feel it’s a game-changer for us and the hosting marketplace in how hosted services will be consumed.”

The public cloud will be a disruptive game changer, said Shepard, and will pay dividends for those that invest now. Tenzing is betting big on cloud computing with significant investments internally in sales, marketing, product management, operations, finance and billing, he said. It has had its private cloud offering for a few years, but Shepard said there was a demand for a more flexible, utility-like approach that can scale up and down based on current demand.

“The new public cloud offering enables users to scale up and down in real time, and custom configure with fine, granular controls,” said Shepard.

In addition to being able to resell a public cloud offering, Shepard said the partnership with Tenzing will mean more incremental business for Canadian partners whose clients expand outside our borders. Instead of such clients having to turn to hosting providers in other countries, partners can offer their clients international hosting services through the Tenzing/OpSource offering. Clients can continue dealing with their same trusted advisor, management is through the same integrated console, and for the partner it means additional incremental revenue they wouldn’t have realized otherwise.

“It’s a global approach. Our clients can add resources in Europe, in the U.S., in Asia,” said Shepard. “They need resources in different locations and this allows us to provide that to our clients.”

Key for partners, said Shepard, is that Tenzing offers a white label-approach that allows the solution provider to put their branding on the solution and continue to own the client relationship.

“We can give them SKUs and a private-label interface to use for their client so it comes across as a service, and they can layer their value on top,” said Shepard. “They can enter the market without the investment. We’re expecting to see a lot of uptake, and we see a lot of our growth coming from the channel.”

Jon Beck, senior vice-president, worldwide channels and alliances with OpSource, said a lot of OpSource’s North American clients have been looking for Canadian options and the partnership with Tenzing will allow it to offer them Canadian hosting services and build on its existing Canadian business.

“The cloud opportunity is here, and it’s not a fad. Customers are going in this direction,” said Beck. “A lot of providers we talk to are reluctant to deploy the cloud because they feel it will cannibalize their existing business. But you’re quick to realize if a customer is insistent on the cloud and has no partner, 100 per cent of zero is zero. The cloud opens new opportunities for projects in new market segments as well, such as the SMB.”

Follow Jeff Jedras on Twitter: @JeffJedrasCDN.

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Jeff Jedras
Jeff Jedras
A veteran technology and business journalist, Jeff Jedras began his career in technology journalism in the late 1990s, covering the booming (and later busting) Ottawa technology sector for Silicon Valley North and the Ottawa Business Journal, as well as everything from municipal politics to real estate. He later covered the technology scene in Vancouver before joining IT World Canada in Toronto in 2005, covering enterprise IT for ComputerWorld Canada. He would go on to cover the channel as an assistant editor with CDN. His writing has appeared in the Vancouver Sun, the Ottawa Citizen and a wide range of industry trade publications.

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