Cloud Services Brokerages Defined

Gartner believes that cloud service brokers (CSBs) are one of the most necessary and attainable opportunities for service providers, distributors and enterprise IT organizations. CSBs will broker relationships between a service consumer and multiple cloud providers.

"The future of cloud computing will be permeated with the notion of brokers negotiating relationships between providers of cloud services and the service customers.  In this context, a broker might be software, appliances, platforms or suites of technologies that enhance the base services available through the cloud. Enhancements will include managing access to these services, providing greater security or even creating completely new services."  (Source: Gartner:  "Cloud Consumers Need Brokerages to Unlock the Potential of Cloud Services")

The CSB model provides an architectural, business and IT operations model for enabling, delivering and managing different cloud services within a federated and consistent provisioning, billing, security, administration and support framework.  For enterprises, this model will enable them to unify cloud services management so they can speed up innovation, collaborate on a global scale, reduce operational costs and grow their bottom line. For service providers, it will enable them to unify the delivery of cloud services and differentiate their networks as a true cloud computing platform.  And for technology providers, it provides an opportunity to provide value-added service ecosystems that help differentiate their core offerings to gain market share, increase customer life-time profitability and enable new channels of distribution.  The stakes have never been higher.

Jamcracker - a 'Cool Vendor' in CSB Enablement

Jamcracker's cloud aggregation platform enables service providers, technology providers, and enterprise IT organizations to operate their own cloud service brokerages.  They can aggregate a wide array of pre-integrated cloud services and on-board their own, and deliver them to their customers, through their channel partners or to their employees.

Gartner recently designated Jamcracker as a "Cool Vendor in Cloud Services Brokerages."   According to Gartner's analysis of Jamcracker, "Enterprises, service providers and cloud providers can all find something of value in Jamcracker's offerings. An enabling platform for service management and integration, combined with the ability to unify services from private cloud through public cloud and value- added services for an ecosystem, is a long-term brokerage opportunity. Customers can simplify a complex situation with a single-service network approach from Jamcracker."  (Source: "Cool Vendors in Cloud Services Brokerages, 2011," Gartner, April, 2011.)