Why the non-hyperscale cloud ecosystem is thriving

The tide has turned for smaller cloud service providers. They no longer fear that hyperscalers will swipe away every last one of their customers. They’re now in the center of a healthy ecosystem that includes their infrastructure providers, customers, and hyperscaler partners. Why would enterprise IT organizations and small and medium-sized businesses snub the public-cloud giants? “The answer is that vertical expertise is king here,��� according to Kevin Shatzkamer (pictured, left), vice president and general manager of service provider solutions at Dell Technologies Inc. Public cloud is built for a lowest common denominator; customers bring their own differentiation, he added. Certain industries have methods and practices ingrained into the way they do IT; retail is especially concerned with latency; healthcare is ruled by HIPAA, for example. Smaller cloud providers with vertical specializations can meet them closer to where they already are, so they can pick up in cloud where they left off on premises, Shatzkamer said.