March 23, 2012
Summary: With Dell targeting the volume SMB sector and cloud SIs serving larger enterprises, traditional IT providers could face extinction as cloud adoption spreads.
For a long while I thought that the old-school systems integrators led by Accenture, Deloitte, Cap Gemini and others would gradually give up market share to the up-and-coming cloud integrators and ultimately join forces with them through acquisitions and mergers. Yesterday’s news of the merger of Cloud Sherpas with GlobalOne is further evidence of the onward march of this new breed, along with Appirio, Bluewolf, Astadia and others.
But what will the future hold for traditional SIs and solution providers if cloud enables an entirely new, more automated way to acquire IT? Yesterday Dell released new research on SMB cloud adoption in support of its ambitions to become a one-stop-shop for mid-sized and smaller companies to source cloud applications and services. If providers like Dell can sweep up the volume market with highly automated, low-touch cloud provision while the new cloud integrators scale up their own more customizable automation to address the high-end enterprise market, then traditional SIs, IT resellers and solution providers may end up marginalized.
