Today, the cloud model has become an integral growth component for many businesses. Businesses are seeing the competitive advantage they can achieve by migrating to the cloud. And this growth will only continue to evolve.

If you’re an IT provider of solutions or services, you have choices when it comes to what cloud platform you’ll select to deliver your offerings. Recent studies suggest that many companies are even hedging their bets and supporting multiple cloud platforms.

This kind of growth is now seen cross-industry and as a direct competitive enabler. So how can a growing and evolving business capitalize on the cloud opportunity?
The explosion of data presents an incredible opportunity for those who can turn it into valuable business information. The cloud is not a destination; it is an innovation platform.

The cloud has enabled us to connect data and data sources we’ve never seen before. We can do things and gain insights that are fundamentally transformative to whole industries.

An example of the kind of data that is becoming so ubiquitous is video. It’s been estimated that by 2019, video will exceed 80 percent of all internet traffic. Almost all new development is around mobile, so a robust mobile platform is essential.

So what are the questions that are keeping your clients up all night, and how can we help our clients overcome challenges around resources and users? The five guiding principles that should be considered when choosing a cloud platform are:

• Choice with consistency because where and how you develop and deploy data and apps does matter
• Hybrid integration to build on what you have today and only change what needs to change
• DevOps productivity to give you the speed to innovate, experiment and continuously deliver the things you need
• Powerful, accessible data and analytics to get closer to the customer and to make smarter decisions in real time
• Cognitive solutions to go to the next level in deeper human engagement and deeper understanding of dark data

The cloud platform is a huge opportunity. It’s no wonder that during a 2015 CIO survey, respondents indicated that 83 percent of CIOs consider cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) as an infrastructure option, and 10 percent are already cloud-first with cloud IaaS as their default infrastructure choice.

Bookmark the IBM Business Partner Inform page, and let us know how we can help you succeed. By becoming an IBM Business Partner, you too can choose the business model that is right for you here to provide your clients with choice and flexibility of hosted, on-premises or hybrid models.