Computacenter sees opportunity in cloud complexity

A woman's hand underneath a small white cloud with icons representing different types of data raining out of it on a black chalkboard background
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Enterprise customers are struggling with cloud complexity, with many in the dark as to how much they are spending on their cloud strategies.

That's according to Computacenter, which claims these difficulties are compounded by a range of challenges that face the modern enterprise, including the speed of change, increased competition, cost pressures and how to use their data more effectively.

"The cloud and datacentre market has become increasingly complex over the last couple of years," said Andreas Toerek, director of business lines enterprise at Computacenter. "With increasing technology and service provider options for our customers, and a lot of players in the market with niche solutions, it's increasingly difficult for customers to be the right one for their specific solution."

Toerek continued: "What our customers are trying to achieve is quicker go-to-market cycles, so they can keep up with their competitors. The size of the competition doesn't matter anymore; technology has enabled very small market players to compete with large traditional companies, and they need to do something to protect their market shares."

The firm also compared a report from IDC that forecasts that public cloud services will reach $370 billion (£295 billion) worldwide by 2022, with a 2019 RightScale report that claims enterprises currently waste up to 35% of their cloud spend.

"It's been quite surprising how tight budgets are in the infrastructure space and how people aren't really controlling this particular spend, nor have a rumbling of where the levels are," said Iain Mobberley, sales leader for platform and hybrid IT at Computacenter. He added added that most customers were using two or probably three hyperscale platforms, in addition to SaaS providers.

The execs were speaking at a briefing with press where Computacenter outlined its cloud business practice, Digital Power, describing as an "holistic solution" for customers, encompassing the datacentre, public cloud and multicloud.

"It becomes a complex environment, [so] that control piece will become really important as customers as they mature," said Mobberley, outlining Computacenter's strategy to help customers "plan, apply, and scale" in the cloud.

Christine Horton

Christine has been a tech journalist for over 20 years, 10 of which she spent exclusively covering the IT Channel. From 2006-2009 she worked as the editor of Channel Business, before moving on to ChannelPro where she was editor and, latterly, senior editor.

Since 2016, she has been a freelance writer, editor, and copywriter and continues to cover the channel in addition to broader IT themes. Additionally, she provides media training explaining what the channel is and why it’s important to businesses.