Robert Youngjohns

Microsoft is no slouch when it comes to cloud computing.

The company has a full suite of products and services to help businesses that want to store data and software applications offsite and access them through the Internet.

So it was a little surprising when Robert Youngjohns, president, Microsoft North America, told a room full of IT vendors that their corporate customers should take several factors into consideration before moving to the cloud.

“Going to the cloud is a business decision. It’s not about technology,” Youngjohns said at Tech Data Corp.’s Cloud Champion Summit at the Don CeSar Hotel in St. Pete Beach, Fla.

In a fast-paced, 20-minute talk to about 50 value-added resellers, he touched on many of same themes that were discussed at length at the UBS Global Technology and Services Conference in New York in November.

The decision to move to cloud-based computing should take into account basic business factors, Youngjohns said, such as cost and whether moving some applications offsite can help a company expand to new geographies or complete a merger more quickly. In some cases, companies have to keep their data onsite for security reasons.

A key question for the IT resellers was how they could make money on cloud services. Customers of the Microsoft cloud get support from the company, so Microsoft bills them directly, but resellers can get commissions and bonuses for selling the services, Youngjohns said.