Cloud Services Brokerage

The middlemen between providers and consumers

Many experts are predicting that brokerage firms (which act as the middlemen between cloud providers and consumers) will become increasingly important over the next decade. They are also predicting that these same brokerage firms will also be responsible for driving profits and innovation forward. Why brokers and not developers or consumers? As with other types of businesses, developers/manufacturers often lack the tools or know-how to reach a broad consumer base. In any type of business it is the job of the broker to find ways to package goods and / or services in ways that benefit both producers and consumers. In most cases the actions of a brokerage firm will actually provide the producer (in this case, a cloud computing provider) with additional profits and ideas, which in turn will allow them to narrow their focus toward technical considerations and innovations.

Most people are resigned to think of brokerage firms as unnecessary (or yet another set of players that must be paid) participants which drive up profits to compensate for their salaries. The truth is that by virtue of the participation of brokerage firms a business can often increase profits many times over, find ways to reach an entirely new demographic as well as broaden their overall appeal. In fact, (as is often the case) marketing ideas from brokerage firms often find their way back to the research and development departments of providers which usually results in entirely new perceptions about what a product does or can do. The bottom line is that no matter how brilliant and / or groundbreaking a concept, service or product is it needs additional personnel to 'bring it to the market' so to speak; this is of course what brokerage firms specialize in.

Multiple types of brokers for multiple cloud types

As is the case with other web related services, brokers will likely form businesses with the intent of connecting specific types of consumers to cloud services. This means that there will be brokerage firms that will emerge that cater only to businesses within specific fields (like information technology, manufacturers, factories, offices, pharmaceuticals). Likewise, there will be brokerages that will concentrate on and cater to individual consumers only. The group(s) that a cloud brokerage firm caters to will depend largely on what type(s) of service(s) that they are promoting and of course, their consumer's needs (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS). For example, IaaS (Infrastructure as a service, which has the widest appeal) will be angled toward both individual users as well as large businesses simply because it offers the user virtually everything they need (software, code, access, hardware, virtualized hardware, storage, security). Large businesses will be able to take advantage of the lower costs of operation with IaaS as well. Less involved types of cloud services like SaaS and PaaS (Software as a Service, Platform as a Service) will be marketed by brokerages to moderate to larger sized businesses that have the capabilities of 'filling in the technological gaps' with either their own developments or that which they contract out to additional groups.

These three service models (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS) give brokerage houses the flexibility to create their own customized service packages to market directly to consumers. After a significant amount of marketing data has been collected, brokerages will then be able to determine what any particular demographics' cloud computing needs really are. This data will then serve as the template for their individual service packages which are aimed at specific types of buyers.

Brokerage firms will also work with both consumers and developers on the software side of things as well. The ultimate aim of these firms is to provide a 'buffet of available services and software options' that the end user or IT manager can then pick and choose from. The old system of deployment (grid-based software and hardware) is flawed in that large amounts of money are spent on software and hardware that are often never even used (or used in a minimal percentage). A cloud-based setup will not only cut the costs of operation for many groups and individuals but it will also cut the amount of time spent learning or adapting to a new system by a significant amount as well.

And for those companies that are not ready to take the plunge into cloud computing just yet, (but would still like to use cloud services as a way to collect and store static data) there will be brokerages that offer data service packages. These brokerages will essentially be selling companies a system that they can use to collect point of sale data, which will be extremely beneficial to retail enterprises, for example. It is through this type of 'soft selling' that many businesses may become turned on to the idea of cloud computing in a big way.

With regards to cloud computing, brokers are needed to generate the revenue that is needed in order to lay the groundwork for the next phase in its development. Cloud brokers are essentially propagating the very idea of cloud computing throughout the market itself, which is no easy task. When big developments and changes come along (like cloud computing) there is a learning curve as well as a new set of technological possibilities that the market and consumers alike must adapt to and familiarize themselves with. It is the job of cloud brokerages to find new ways to enhance the outward appeal of this new technology.