Interview with Aaron Sherrill, Senior Analyst

Any conversation about managed or hosted services wouldn’t be complete without talking about security. Resident managed security services expert Aaron Sherrill will present and moderate a panel during our “Building the Cloud Trust” session at the Hosting & Cloud Transformation Summit (HCTS) on September 24 at 1:15pm PDT, in the Orovada Breakout Room 1 at the Aria in Las Vegas.

Q: What will you be discussing in this session?

A: Finding service providers that can be trusted has become a key concern for enterprises, particularly as cloud and service providers play a larger and increasingly critical role in enterprise strategies. My session, “Building the Cloud of Trust,” will dive into the challenging topic of trust. We will look at how trust in cloud and service providers has shifted over the last two decades, how that trust is continuing to transform, and how cloud service providers are fervently working on ways to prove they warrant trust from their customers. The session will be followed by a panel discussion focused on how cloud and service providers are building trust with their customers, and how enterprises are adapting to disruptive business models, with recommendations for both service providers and enterprises in an economy centered on trust.

Q: Why is this topic significant?

A: While contracts, SLAs and binding promises may provide an adequate standard of trust for some digital assets, most organizations are seeking a much higher standard of trust. Organizations need to know how their digital assets are protected, where those assets reside, how and why their assets are being accessed, and that services are functioning properly – in short, organizations want to verify, on demand, that service providers are doing what they said they would do. 

According to a recently commissioned study and 451 Research’s Voice of the Enterprise: Cloud, Hosting & Managed Services, Workloads and Key Projects 2019 survey, data privacy, security and loss of control are among the top barriers to enterprises leveraging cloud and service providers to a greater extent.

Q: We are celebrating 15 years of our Hosting & Cloud Transformation Summit. What do you believe is the most valuable aspect of HCTS?

A: HCTS always delivers presentations on relevant and compelling subject matter, with top-notch speakers and panels for the sessions, but I think the most valuable part of the conference is the one-on-one meetings. The meetings are a highlight not just for attendees, but also for analysts like me. The face-to-face discussions highlight 451 Research’s breadth of knowledge and expertise, and provide us with great insight into the most pressing issues of the day.

Q: What was your biggest takeaway from last year’s HCTS?

A: The move to managed services and subscription-based services is expanding into most every industry and technology. However, the move to this new model is much more challenging than most vendors and providers initially believed. Many technology and service providers are trying to better understand where they best fit in a hybrid, subscription-based world.

Q: Many of our attendees return to this event annually. What do you think brings them back every year? 

A: The data and content focused on digital enterprises and the role and importance of service providers in a hybrid and multi-cloud world provide great insight into a rapidly changing market. I believe most attendees discover new opportunities or find key insight that helps shape their business strategies for the coming years.

Q: What are you excited to see/experience at this year’s Summit?

A: It is always great to reconnect and meet new people at HCTS. I am looking forward to hearing from service providers about how they are tackling challenges in security, scalability and building trust, and how emerging technologies are impacting their strategies.

Register today for HCTS and save 25% by using promo code BLOG25. Don't miss our other Q&As with speakers to learn about all the upcoming topics, including the previous Q&A with Craig Matsumoto.

Interview with Al Sadowski, Research Vice President

In May, we opened registration for our 15^th annual Hosting & Cloud Transformation Summit, and the response has been incredible! We are excited to bring our leading insights on disruptive and innovative technologies back to Las Vegas. With two months to go before showtime, we will start by introducing our presenting analysts and their session topics through a new series of Q&As.

First up, Research Vice President Al Sadowski:

Q: What will you be discussing in this session?

A: The title of my session is “Voice of the Service Provider: How do Service Providers Stack Up?” I’ll be sharing insights into how service providers are transforming their own businesses in order to remain relevant in the eyes of enterprises. Supported by our latest survey data, the session will go into detail about differentiation strategies, budgets and spending comparisons, and product roadmaps. The session will be followed by a panel discussion with a few hardware and software vendors focused on enabling service providers with enterprise-facing products, along with service provider best practices.

Q: Why is this topic significant?

A: Service providers are no longer just purveyors of compute and storage; they are now seen as partners for services beyond basic infrastructure and as key allies in hybrid architectures. But nearly all have a long way to go in order to automate and affordably scale a business that can provide reliable, secure and performance products and services. According to our Voice of the Service Provider: Infrastructure Evolution 2019 survey results, 94% of service providers admit their IT environments will require partial or complete transformation over the next three years!

Analyst: Liam Eagle

Enterprise adoption of cloud infrastructure offerings and SaaS is accelerating, while the dominance of hyperscale providers is increasing in the public infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud market. However, other service providers – including those with a history of providing managed hosting and operating infrastructure of their own – have a notable role to play in the cloud adoption process for the majority of enterprises and smaller businesses. That role is likely to include designing, managing and securing public cloud resources, as well as potentially supplementing them with private cloud resources of their own.

The nature of this role, and the degree of its significance, is supported and detailed in part by a study conducted in the first half of 2016 by 451 Research, and commissioned by Microsoft. In particular, the study results detail the nature of the cloud transformation taking place in the enterprise, and they offer insight into how service providers might take advantage of new opportunities emerging as a result. Understanding and acting on this fundamental shift will be extremely important for traditional hosting providers, as growth continues to dwindle in the core legacy facets of that business, such as shared and dedicated hosting.