Cloud brings enterprise technology capabilities to mid-market businesses. As such, mid-sized businesses are rapidly turning to cloud technology to gain a competitive edge.

According to Deloitte's latest technology survey of mid-market executives, 48 percent are using cloud services and 36 percent have pilot projects underway or are investigating cloud. I believe cloud use to be much higher for mid-market organizations as we have seen that organizations are using 10-15 times more cloud services than they are aware of.

The growing use of known and unknown cloud services presents a new host of challenges for mid-market IT teams, including:

• Lack of cloud visibilityas technology spend increasingly shifts to business leaders IT has little ability to identify, monitor, or manage cloud providers
• Cloud risk, security, and compliance concerns
• Rising cloud costsdue to duplicate cloud providers
• Limited IT resourcesto meet increased demand from business groups and manage a mix of public, private and hybrid clouds

Helping Mid-Sized Businesses Strategically Manage Cloud From One Portal 

At Partner Summit 2015, we introduced Cisco Cloud Consumption as a Service to help mid-market customers directly address these challenges.

With Cloud Consumption as a Service, customers can discover and monitor which cloud services are being used in their organization, and provide greater protection for their organization by reducing cloud risks.

Cloud Consumption as a Service is an annual SaaS subscription that provides customers a broad view of their organization's cloud usage. Customers will get data security tools and detailed risk profiles for each cloud service provider so they can identify potential security or compliance risks. With these capabilities, customers will also be able to compare providers to find the right cloud services to meet their needs, and benchmark their cloud use against peers. Ultimately, the software helps them work better with their internal clients, and more accurately predict future cloud needs.

Boosting Cisco Partner and Provider Cloud Practices

By reselling Cisco Cloud Consumption as a Service, Cisco partners and providers can enable a consultative approach to selling cloud professional services, managed services, hybrid IT and Intercloud solutions. Armed with insight into customer's cloud usage, partners and providers can become a their customers' strategic cloud and hybrid IT advisor, and create a strong foundation for their Intercloud strategy.

Cloud Consumption as a Service can help partners and providers:

• Become a strategic cloud advisorby gaining deep insight into customers' cloud use, and advising them on their cloud and hybrid IT strategy. Help customers mitigate cloud risks, and select the right cloud services.
• Grow cloud revenuesby establishing a data-driven, consultative selling approach to identify and position hybrid IT, Intercloud, and security opportunities.
• Expand your cloud professional or managed services practice.
• Differentiate against competitionwith greater insight into customer's cloud use and environment.

For Partners: Learn how to Sell Cloud Consumption as a Service

Learn more about how you can start a conversation with your customers about Cloud Consumption as a Service.