If you think about offering cloud backup services, there are a number of things to keep in mind. Today there is so much confusion about what your offer must contain, where you have to host your customer's data and applications, how much they cost and other questions. One factor that makes it difficult is that many vendors jump on the market - from backup solutions through hosting services to cloud service providers, and more.
The failure of many Managed Service Providers (MSP) is to start with the available technology and then work to make deals around them. It's awkward and can cause problems. Instead, companies must work towards technology. To support, I have outlined four steps that can help determine and expose the cloud backup service business.
Step 1: Determine your target market
If companies already know which market to go to, they also have to think about customers from the point of view of the amount of data and applications they use, and the importance of both. Do customers like cloud? Are you open to hosting a part of your infrastructure in the cloud during a disaster? All of these and other questions must be considered to help you determine what your Cloud Backup customers are. This helps determine and handle new customers as soon as you run out of sales to an existing customer base.
Step 2: Choose the Right Cloud Storage Provider and Backup
Let me show that I have used the term "provider" in the plural. You might need to choose as a company several providers who develop overall service offerings. You need at least one backup solution provider and one cloud storage provider to start a cloud backup service business. But before you run it to your local backup software manufacturer and see if it has cloud options, you really think about the customer needs that you set in the first step. Translate business requirements that define your market as a technology requirement and search among selected providers. For example, if your customers all have one or more virtual critical applications Replication to the cloud is needed to maintain a high level of availability, so your search for cloud providers and backups must include this capability. The following is a brief list of considerations that I consider important:
Price: Many cloud storage providers have complex pricing models. This will affect the way you value your service. Make sure it's simple enough for you to understand exactly what your costs are so that your backup offer is predictable and profitable.
Storage Levels: Without discussing details, almost every major cloud store has storage for hot, warm and cold data. Thermal analogy means how often data is accessed and used. Everyone has a slightly better price per GB, but there are hidden costs for voting time and exit fees and other variables. You have to check which service level you want to get with each and choose the one that best suits the model you want.
Restore features: Customers are often not interested in securing everything. More important for him is that his business can react quickly after major incidents and that data can be generated quickly. Here, the backup vendors to be selected must support various recovery requirements - continuous recovery, physical-virtual (P2V), and continuous replication, for example. Each feature can be part of your basic offer or associated with an optional additional fee.
Step 3: Design the price correctly
This factor has a greater impact on whether the customer buys or not. Make it too confusing, too expensive, even too cheap - anything that won't let your potential customers know its value - and the offer becomes a shopkeeper. There are many flexible sections that will help make your pricing model for your Cloud Backup Service business look like it should. This includes overhead, personnel, software, infrastructure, cloud storage and maintenance.
In short, you need to determine your hourly rate (which includes your hourly business costs that are uncollectible and uncollectible) and your service fees (for example, software, storage, and initial costs), make some assumptions about average storage sizes -or your customers, and set profit margins.
Step 4: Sell your cloud backup service
The most important thing I can give you in this article is the fact that you don't really sell cloud backup. They sell smooth processes, operational readiness, and business continuity. To sell this service, you must first talk to your customers about their business needs. Let them determine the data, applications, and systems that are important for the business. Ask them whether and how long the company can continue to work without this workload. Once you have all the ammunition provided by this customer, you can discuss how to use cloud backup and recovery strategies that meet well-defined business needs.
There is some accuracy in implementing this process, which will take time and experience to be 100% correct, but the above strategy is the right one. This is very customer-centric, allows customers to decide in advance what is important and what is not, and provides all the frameworks needed to show how cloud backup can help maintain business operations.
This article only provides a brief overview of what is needed to truly define and build a cloud backup service company. But by following the steps and looking at each one by paying attention to the functionality, costs, and value of customers, you are ready to add predictable and profitable services that are useful to your customers.
