The enterprise sector has seen strong attention towards using cloud services to deliver platforms and software but how will the small and medium business sector take advantage of what could give them a huge advantage. SavvisDirect seeks to deliver infrastructure-as-a-service, cloud storage, as well as SAAS-marketplace, e-mail, collaboration, and security for SMB. Later this month, they’ll be adding ten more SAAS services such as social media, and search tools.

I spoke with Martin Capurro, Director of Product Management about SavvisDirect’s customer-centric approach.

Customers can easily chat with SavvisDirect and contact them to tell them what they’d like and they’re building on a community-capability. The feedback loop is very important to them and the most common contact is e-mailing them directly; but they want that conversation to be more public and thus the community aspect is very important.

With their product, SavvisDirect is targeting three personas of customers:

The developers—the type of person who has a product but not her own infrastructure and doesn’t have the current funds to build it. Next, IT administrators at small and medium outfits—adding seats and the ability to bring service to employees at the push of a button. Finally, pure business users—who are interested in a platform that gives them the ability to run their business without having to worry about the down-and-gritty.

With this approach, SavvisDirect is set to become a strong player in the infrastructure-as-a-service market for people looking for cloud-services off-the-cart rather than with giant multi-million dollar contracts. That means not just providing the services, but giving people the knowledge and training to use them.

SavvisDirect seeks to become the HomeDepot of the cloud market

People are interested in cloud, but still uncertain as to how it functions and what it can do for them.

Home Depot does more than just sell raw materials; they also offer classes and instruction on how to do what they want with the raw materials supplied. SavvisDirect can do the same thing, but with the cloud. The company sits in a space where they can advocate for using the cloud while also selling them a solution that could give them a lot of freedom—especially when replacing office infrastructure.

The people-centric approach lets the cloud-company focus more on consumers and small-medium businesses—less on enterprise—meaning that it’s more about what individuals need and less about contracts.

“You can’t provide services just bluntly and expect people to want them,” says Capurro; “there’s an element of education and demonstrating how your services help them and can enable them.”

Two years ago, CenturyLink bought SavvisDirect for $3.2b and with their datacenters and already-existing infrastructure this will provide a powerful foundation in the coming months as SavvisDirect rolls out even more services and courts more customers. Combining education, cloud-services, and the ability to provide everything a business needs for IT services puts them in an excellent position to be the best friend of SMBs and startups looking for their own infrastructure.