'What Are You Waiting For?' 9 Cloud Strategy Questions For Jim Lippie

Jim Lippie of Clarity Channel Advisors
Jim Lippie of Clarity Channel Advisors

Talking Cloud With Jim Lippie of Clarity Channel Advisors

The rate of cloud adoption has been on the rise at an exponential rate over the course of the last year. This is for good reason as there is immense opportunity in the space for businesses, both small and large.
Jim Lippie, chief advisor at Clarity Channel Advisory Group, is a channel veteran that started Clarity Channel Advisors to help MSPs develop a cloud first strategy that bundles in their existing managed services. He uses his experience as President of IndependenceIT, and CEO of Bos-ton-based MSP Product Networks, to help MSPs today in their move to the cloud and even gives insight into what to look for when searching for prospective clients. He spoke with IT Best of Breed recently.

Why is it important for a company to have a cloud strategy?

It's important for service providers to develop a comprehensive cloud strategy because of a concept that I call 'channel eclipse.' That is a phenomena where large direct companies and software as a service providers are taking revenue and market share away from MSPs. It's happening every day. I see it with literally every single service provider that I work with and talk to.
A great example is file, sync and share. I can tell you that five years ago, I could take a ten per-son client and I could charge them $1,200 a month for office, file server and exchange. I would maintain their environment, and make $600 a month in pure profit. But today, they could go get Office365, DropBox, both great products with great integration between them, and they'd pay $300 a month.
The economics are changing drastically for these service providers. The reason that it's so im-portant to a comprehensive cloud strategy is economics. They can't afford not to.

Why has cloud adoption been growing at such a high rate?

I think it's growing fast because people like the functionality. Customers like the functionality that it provides them, and in many cases, it's cheaper. That's not true in all cases, but in many cases, it's cheaper. That's a pretty good combination for a small business.
I can tell you with my small business, I got off the ground in September and in literally 30 minutes I went to an Office365 provider and I signed up for Office365, I got my website up and running fast, and I signed up for DropBox. So now I pay in total $25-$30 a month for all my IT needs.
Seven years ago to get the same functionality that I get today, I would have bought a small busi-ness server, I would have installed it, and that probably would have been $15,000 to get it off the ground. Now I pay $30 a month.

NEXT: It's Not Too Late