Companies looking to take the leap into the cloud are now being provided a solid roadmap and foundation, says local ICT managed services provider Executive Solutions.

The company, which offers cost effective, managed ICT services, recently partnered with cloud platform and cloud products distributor Tarsus Cloud On Demand, in order to help its clients move their backup and disaster recovery solutions to the cloud.

“Our goal has always been to add value through services to our customers, and now with the drive to cloud, it was critical that we walked this road with them,” says Richard Levine, MD at Executive Solutions. “We recently assisted a customer in developing their backup and DR strategy by building a hybrid environment that leveraged their on premise assets and the cloud services, ultimately delivering a staged transition to the cloud.”

“The customer needed a solution that would offer high availability, even though it was operating out of the cloud. Tarsus Cloud On Demand’s infrastructure was able to achieve this and to a large extent give them exactly the same experience / speed they would have if they were working purely onsite. The client has the availability they need as well as the flexibility required to move workloads between sites as and when they require it,” adds Levine.

Executive Solutions delivers robust ICT solutions and support across a number of industry verticals. Its services range from consulting to security, right through to end point support. As a premium partner (and customer) of Tarsus Cloud On Demand, it is white labelling the company’s backup, disaster recovery and virtual server environments.

According to Levine the biggest challenge they are receiving from customers when navigating the potential of the cloud, is that they simply don’t like change. The notion of “if it’s not broken don’t fix it” rings true in the cloud era, where he says it is his company’s job to talk to customers about better future-proofing their business – which is where the cloud comes in to play.

“A massive benefit of our partnership with Cloud On Demand to our business is that they firstly understand the cloud, secondly they have excellent products in their stable, and thirdly they can scale from an enterprise solution with their VMware backbone right through to the medium enterprise with their Azure offering, while also having the added benefit of security integration through these platforms which is key. This combination of benefits gives our customers the advantage of choice – no matter their size,” adds Levine.

“There is no doubt the cloud is growing and we have for a while been trying to find a partner who was the right fit for us. The fact that they are 100% channel focussed was a major contributing factor for us. As a cloud provider we don’t want to have to compete with our partner when we get to the table with a customer.”

While Levine states that Executive Solutions does, to a point, still have mixed feelings about the cloud, as the efficiencies and flexibility it offers will at some point start taking core business away from managed service providers. He says that they are seeing this as an opportunity to develop a business model that is entrenched on value-added services and offerings that will in turn make them an indispensable cloud partner. This said, he says that the company are adamant cloud evangelists.

“Companies are hard pressed to find their place in the cloud even though the evidence, such as what Executive Solutions are doing, speaks for itself. What customers want to see is that the cloud works; it checks the boxes of security, workload mobility and flexibility. Once you can demonstrate this it is easier to get them to take the first step,” states Jonathan Kropf, CEO at Tarsus Cloud On Demand.

“We are delighted that we have forward thinking partners like Executive Solutions that have the foresight and business understanding as well as the technical and business acumen that is needed to help end users on their path to the cloud,” ends Kropf.