White Paper White Label Cloud How You Can Offer Custom-Branded Growth of Public Cloud... 2 How does it work?... 3 What are the benefits of White label cloud?... 4 Is this the right solution for me?... 4 White label cloud features: your customer s brand on your infrastructure... 5 Conclusion... 5 January 2013
Growth of Public Cloud Over the 2012 2016 forecast period, public IT cloud services will enjoy a compound annual growth rate of 26.4%, five times that of the IT industry overall, as companies accelerate their shift to the cloud services model for IT consumption. International Data Corporation (IDC) forecast, September 2012 Cloud computing is an old idea whose time has come. It represents the latest development of two intersecting trends that have been playing out for quite awhile: the desire of companies to outsource a wider range of their capabilities and the efforts of providers to deliver IT as a utility, similar to electricity or water. Public cloud is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service environment that provides access to a shared pool of computing resources for use by anyone who wants to purchase the service. Public cloud services are generally available through a self-service model where customers can provision resources themselves using an online portal and pay for those resources on a pay-asyou-go basis also known as utility or metered computing. Public clouds are operated by service providers and made available to the general public. According to Gartner 1, worldwide spending on public IT cloud services will approach $207 billion in 2016, up from $91 billion in 2011. Businesses risk losing out on vital revenue opportunities if they do not take advantage of cloud and its cost efficiency. Even more important is the risk of losing their existing customer base to the big name cloud players. However, many businesses have been hesitant to launch a cloud offering due to the expense and time it takes to develop. Not only do they need to take into account the capital expense required to buy the necessary hardware and data canter capacity, they also need to have the skill set available to design and manage such a service. Recognizing these hurdles, resellers have started partnering with established cloud providers to white label their services. This partnership allows them to retain their existing customers while also appealing to new ones specifically looking for cloud services. 1 http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=2074815 www.appcore.com 2013 Appcore. All Rights Reserved 2
Today, most cloud customers look and act alike. Just ten percent of businesses account for nearly half of the market for cloud offerings. However, smaller companies represent the majority of purchasers and they tend to use public cloud services to launch new applications. These adopters are concentrated in industries like professional services, e- commerce, technology and telecommunications. Over the next three years, close to 65 percent of the growth in cloud spending will come from businesses that make little or no use of the cloud today. How does it work? White label branding has been a big part of economics dating back to the Industrial Revolution. Businesses make products to be branded by their clients, allowing smaller businesses the ability to sell their own brand of products without investing in the necessary infrastructure. Since that time, this principle has largely gone unchanged and has even been adopted in today s technology world. For example, a lot of smaller businesses in Asia buy electronic gadgets like flash drives, keyboards, mice or headphones from Chinese manufacturers, add their own brand on them and sell them in their own country. This principle extends to cloud computing because of its high cost barrier of entry for smaller companies. These smaller companies typically cannot invest the capital expense or time needed to meet demands. In addition, once they have, it can take 12 to 18 months before they see a return on their investment. As a larger provider of cloud services, you cannot appeal to all demographics, nor can you cater to all of them anyway. The process of rebranding other company s products to resell them builds your company reputation much more quickly than you could on your own. White label cloud is a way to increase your exposure and widen your user base indirectly. You can sell your infrastructure and expertise to smaller cloud providers, who then sell the service of the same infrastructure and applications to users in a slightly different form and for a different purpose. Consequently, white label branding allows smaller cloud providers to sell their unique applications and ideas by utilizing your infrastructure and expertise. www.appcore.com 2013 Appcore. All Rights Reserved 3
What are the benefits of White label cloud? Dramatically lower time-to-market: Leverage the Appcore platform and applications portfolio to launch branded cloud services quickly and easily. Grow customer revenue: Add high margin unified cloud services that can be upsold and drive new customer revenues via a standard subscription pricing model. Reduce delivery costs: Eliminate the need to develop and create your own integrated service portfolio. Easy to deploy and scale: A common cloud service model integrates quoting, provisioning, service management and billing for deployment and scalability ease. Drive increased customer retention: Add requested cloud services to broaden your service portfolio, optimize revenue and retain customers. Focus on what you do best: White label cloud allows business owners to keep a small IT staff without compromising a big IT presence. Is offering White label cloud the right solution for me? We ve now emerged into cloud computing, and see it as the next wave of DRFortress doing business. Our tools, combined with Appcore cloud technology, provide the complete package to our customers. The combination is delivering a monthly recurring revenue model to our customers, all without a mainland cloud provider which has never been done before. Fred Rodi President & Founder DRFortress YES. As we mentioned earlier, computing infrastructure is moving to the cloud quickly, and cloud servers are replacing physical servers. With an annual growth rate of over 26 percent, now is the time to start offering white label cloud solutions to your customers. Here are just a few examples of companies that you can target with your white label offerings: Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) o These companies are increasingly offering their Softwareas-a Service over the Internet, supported by servers running in the cloud. If end customers need access to the underlying cloud servers as well as the software, then white label cloud lets you offer them this access under your own branding. Managed Service Providers (MSPs) o These companies are increasingly offering and managing cloud-delivered services for their clients. Rather than recommending third-party cloud providers, you can now offer your own White label cloud. www.appcore.com 2013 Appcore. All Rights Reserved 4
Small to Medium sized Businesses o Enterprises of any size can benefit from white label cloud. White label cloud reduces the need for expensive IT resources and gives businesses a clear understanding of utilization of resources. Further, white label cloud offers chargeback to individual departments, cost-centers and geographical locations, simplifying account expenses. Your customer s brand on your infrastructure White label cloud through Appcore Onsite provides your customers with the following: Marketing Website and Collateral: Your customer can communicate and market cloud through their own branded and customized website running as a cloud server on your infrastructure. You also receive custom-branded sales material. Name, logo, tagline, color scheme, favicon Website, PowerPoint, appstore, data sheet, brochures, feature comparison Support Portal: Pay-as-you-go billing is possible with granular metering of servers, CPU, memory plus bandwidth, licensing and multiple storage options. Includes e-commerce, invoicing, product offering configuration, support tickets and customer tracking. Name, logo, tagline, color scheme, favicon Cloud Console: Customer self-service IT and network provisioning interface. Point and click network management of firewall, load balancing and IP policies. Name, logo, tagline, favicon Automation Management Portal (AMP): The central place where all of your cloud automation is controlled and managed. Administrators can access cloud components like the support portal, Network Operations Center, intelligence and cloud networks. Conclusion White label cloud is a simple cloud solution for companies interested in offering cloud services to their customers. It provides a new opportunity to enhance your revenue stream by offering cloud servers, applications, data storage and disaster recovery options. www.appcore.com 2013 Appcore. All Rights Reserved 5
White label cloud provides your customers a complete cloud solution with their custom brand. Appcore Onsite allows them to implement a go-tomarket ready cloud business and enter into the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) markets within 30 days. By becoming a partner with Appcore, you can offer cloud servers and solutions without having to invest the time, money or resources to set your business up from scratch. By offering businesses a white label cloud solution, you will enable them to provide a fully self-managed cloud to their customers with the freedom to run the OS and applications of their choice and allocate CPU and RAM as needed. White label cloud with Appcore features a customized marketing website, web management interface, and an integrated metered usage and billing system. This cloud solution also provides extensive system and sales training to give you and your customers the greatest opportunity for success. Reinforce relationships with your brand by offering your customer innovative cloud services they want and need. Our team of industry experts from multi-faceted disciplines helps clients grow revenues, reduce costs and improve operations. For more information To learn more about Appcore Onsite and offering White label cloud solutions to your customers, contact your Appcore sales representative or visit http://www.appcore.com/ Learn more about Appcore http://www.appcore.com Share this White Paper Copyright 2013 Appcore. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for Appcore products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Appcore shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. Created January 2013; Updated January 2013, Rev. 1