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PCR speaks to Westcoast cloud services director Mark Davies about the company’s business, its thoughts on the cloud and how others can benefit from it.
Congratulations on being nominated for a PCR Award. Tell us about your reaction to being nominated and what you think of the awards.
It’s always pleasing to be nominated for awards as it validates the hard work that goes on behind the scenes in a company as big as ours. The awards are a great opportunity to get together with peers in the industry and let your hair down together and just enjoy a night of celebrating the great work that goes on in the channel.
What are the main areas of business for Westcoast?
Westcoast is a pretty diverse business that covers a multitude of areas but the biggest of these being retail, mobility, enterprise solutions and PC and Servers. One of the fastest growing area of the business where we are seeing great success is in cloud. This is still relatively new to Westcoast but the capability and opportunity around it is immense.
Talk us through some of Westcoast’s key partnerships.
Our main key vendors revenue wise are built around HPE/HPI, Microsoft and Apple. Westcoast has always adopted a mentality of narrow and deep focus with it’s partners. Rather than having hundreds of vendors we represent we prefer a more in-depth focus to really drive value from the vendor to our partners.
How important is the Cloud to Westcoast’s business?
The Cloud is extremely important to us as a business. It is going through an incredible growth stage at the moment and allowing us to build skills and capabilities not previously seen within distribution. These skills can then be leveraged into other areas of the business to help drive even more recurring revenue opportunities and also a monthly consumption of more traditional services.
What do you believe are the reasons for the growth of the Cloud?
The ‘Cloud’ hype has been around for a long time now, well over ten years. It isn’t something that has just sprung up and seen the amazing growth we see now. It has gone through the early adopters phase and is now moving much more into the mainstream phase which is why you see the growth that is happening.
What are the biggest challenges for enterprises looking to move to the Cloud?
The biggest challenges faced will be understanding what should sit within traditional infrastructure and what should sit in a public cloud. There isn’t a one size fits all model so getting a partner that really understands your requirements, down to the smallest details is critical to the success in achieving a full cloud implementation, or more likely a hybrid solution of the two.
How do you think the Cloud market will look in 12 months time?
?Bigger and better than ever! We feel the cloud is at the start of it’s mass market phase, so the incredible growth will continue to accelerate. More niche vendors will deliver solutions that will fit around the hyperscale platforms which will continue to drive value and revenue into the channel which can only be a good thing.
