In the world of cloud and the emergence of the Cloud Services Broker the end game should be all about what can the Cloud Services Broker do to help your business bottom and top line

In a recent blog I wrote about the history of the IT Solutions Provider from the traditional VAR to Managed Services Provider and now the Cloud Services Broker and how their business models and “value prop” has needed to change based on market demand. I also included in this blog the fact that the Line of Business Manager ie CFO, CMO etc is increasingly becoming more of the cloud buyer than the IT Manager and is looking for the cloud to bring them “business-outcome” solutions. Actually  to quote Milind Govekar, managing vice president at Gartner “Many lines of business buy external cloud services without the initial involvement of, or oversight from, IT leaders” Along with another Gartner quote “analysts are predicting that by the year 2015, 35% of enterprise IT expenditures for most organizations will be managed outside the IT department’s budget”

So what is a Line of Business Manager and what are they looking for when buying cloud? Trying very hard not to over-generalize the Line of Business Manager,

• has titles such as CFO, CMO, CRO, COO, VP Finance, VP Mktg, VP Sales, VP Ops
• are trying to meet their business goals including increasing productivity, controlling costs and staying ahead of the competition. They are increasingly hearing about and learning how cloud can help them meet their goals and are starting to proactively get more cloud educated.
• are trying to fix pain point they have become frustrated with
• value any support they can get to help them achieve their top line and bottom line business goals
• investigate cloud via the web, their staff and peers
• and are looking for someone they can trust, and has business acumen with proven business results

The cloud is bringing an enormous selection of services to the Line of Business Manager. It’s up to the Cloud Services Broker to understand their business needs and goals, match those needs and goal with relevant cloud “bundled solutions” and deliver “business outcome”.