Learn All About Rapid Scale's Cloud Computing Solutions

WHO IS RAPIDSCALE?

RapidScale was founded in 2008 and is now known as the number one managed cloud services provider with a global footprint. They strive to be the most customer-oriented managed cloud services provider in the industry. Their objective is to understand your organization’s long-term goals around delivering, supporting, and managing IT. RapidScale’s personalized cloud solutions reflect the understanding that no two businesses are the same and their cloud solutions shouldn’t be either.

WHITE-GLOVE SERVICE

To make it easy for their customers, RapidScale has a full suite of white-glove services, not just from starting the conversation but also through service delivery. RapidScale provides exceptional attention to detail, assurance of a smooth transition and managed migrations. They also provide 24x7x365 support, with complete end-to-end management and monitoring of a client’s environment. Rapidscale is focused on building long-term relationships with their customers.

COMPANY GROWTH

Acquisition of Vonage’s Hosted Infrastructure Segment

• Growth of client base and revenue
• Growth of RapidScale team
• Expanded East Coast footprint
• Office in Tysons, VA

Expansion of Raleigh Office

• Building out new office space
• Growing a team of 30 employees, including talent in egineering, accoung management, support and more

THEIR CLOUD SOLUTIONS

CloudServer (Infrastructure as a Service)

When people think about cloud, infrastructure as a service is one of the first things that comes to mind. For RapidScale, that’s what a lot of their customers go to them for, it is one of their number one revenue generating platforms.

Some of the CloudServer benefits are:

• Simplicity – Replace on-premise servers, support, upgrades and backups with CloudServer.
• Economics – Pay as you go consumption pricing.
• Scalability – CloudServer services are hosted in multiple data centers in the United States, Europe, and Asia for maximum scale and geographic diversity.
• Performance – Ability to add vCPU, vRam, and storage on-demand to ensure optimal application performance.
• Security – Customers are isolated in protected resource pools and VLANs to ensure maximum physical and virtual security.

Detailed Service Description and Deliverables:

• RapidScale Provided Virtual machines
• Virtual Machines include:
  • Operating system as specified on order
  • vCPU, vRam, and Storage as specified on order
  • Unlimited Data Transfer (Internet Bandwidth)
  • Public and/or Private IP Addresses
    • Public IPs must be justified per ARIN standards
  • Admin Access to operating systems and provisioning portal
  • Monitoring, emergency reboots, connectivity, 24×7 support

Standard and Management Features:

 

CloudDesktop (Desktop as a Service)

When you take the end user into consideration and how they interact with an environment and applications, you realize that more and more end users are working from home. RapidScale can provide a desktop as a service solution in a secure way across any device.

The Benefits:

• Security – Lock down legacy PCs by forcing them to RapidScale’s CloudDesktop platform, and we take care of support, patching, backups, and virus protection
• Productivity – Users can access their CloudDesktop from anywhere at any time, while administration is centrally controlled
• Performance – RapidScale maintains the highest performance enterprise infrastructure available on the market today – 10G Core Network, Cisco UCS Compute, NetApp All Flash Storage
• Scalability – CloudDesktops can be upgraded on the fly with little to no impact to the end-user

CloudOffice (SMB Bundled Solution)

CloudOffice is a bundled, multi-tenant virtual desktop solution that includes a Windows 10 desktop experience, company file share, user profile storage, Microsoft Office 2016, as well as many other common productivity applications. Self-service provisioning of desktops and applications via a robust portal is also a key feature of the CloudOffice service.

CloudMail

RapidScale’s fully managed CloudMail offering allows businesses to enjoy the benefits of Hosted Exchange without the server management, troubleshooting, device setup, and much more. Managed cloud customers also have access to their 24x7x365 customer support for time help.

Features:

• Benefit from the latest version of Microsoft Exchange
• Automatic updates with ActiveSync across all devices
• Built-in integrated email archiving, retention and discovery capabilities that save costs and simplify the process of preserving business communications
• 50GB per mailbox

CloudRecovery (Disaster Recovery as a Service)

Benefits of CloudRecovery:

• Increased uptime and data protection for business critical applications
• No capital expenses
• Predictable costs
• Low RPO/RTO times

To learn more about RapidScale visit  Custom Cloud Services

Century Link's Managed Services And Solutions Overview

If your business is considering managed services as part of your overall IT strategy, particularly cloud based, then Century Link should definitely be on your short list.  Here’s why......

POSITIONED FOR GROWTH

Something everyone can understand is the tremendous growth within the cloud market. At one hundred forty-six billion dollars this year, the cloud market is growing at a rate we’ve never seen before. The growth will only continue; we expect the cloud market to grow to two hundred thirty-six billion dollars by 2020, that is a 22 percent compound annual growth rate. What this means is if we are not having a conversation with our customers about cloud, somebody else is. Thirty-two billion dollars is just infrastructure and platform cloud, and when we discuss that we typically have to also talk about public cloud, private cloud and all the different pieces of cloud. By 2020, we expect 85 percent of enterprises to commit a multi-cloud architecture model.

CLOUD APPLICATION MANAGER

Cloud Application Manager is a platform that can help you manage any infrastructure, cloud, and application. The platform’s features which include Application Lifecycle Management, Managed Services Everywhere, and the deployment of Azure Cloud will help you manage any infrastructure from a single interface.

With Application Lifecycle Management you can manage applications from start to finish, scale, schedule deployments, update, terminate workloads, and automate migration across environments to any cloud to best suit business needs. You can also utilize continuous auto-discovery of available resources seamlessly and in any infrastructure on a single platform. Let’s discuss what application lifecycle management offers:

SELF-SERVICE APPLICATION CATALOG

• Cloud Application Manager’s intuitive portal allows users to self-serve reusable infrastructure, applications and charts.
• Components can be deployed based on pre-set IT policies.

AUTHENTICATION

• Federated access control, user management and permission definition of an infrastructure provide visibility and auditing capabilities.

ORCHESTRATION

• Customers define applications with infrastructure provisioned at the time of deployment.
• A wide range of inherent automation protocols enables flexibility across heterogeneous environments.

ADMIN & REPORTING

• Extensive administration rules promote IT governance for the delivery of services as well as managing users, namespace, templates, and resources.
• Real-time dashboard for viewing containers, applications, resources, user activity and clusters in use.

AUTO DISCOVERY

• Discover cloud instances already running in other environments, such as other public cloud platforms.

As mentioned previously Managed Services Anywhere is another feature that is part of the Cloud Application Manager platform. Having CenturyLink manage mission-critical workloads and infrastructure enables customers to focus on their core business. Certified experts at CenturyLink can monitor and operate system patches and updates on any hybrid instance.

WHAT DOES THE MANAGED SERVICES ANYWHERE FEATURE HAVE TO OFFER?

MONITORING

• OS and Application level monitoring including proactive and reactive support.
• Reduce errors and enhance security
• Leverage experts to monitor the environment, freeing you to focus on your core business needs

CONFIGURATION & ACCESS MANAGEMENT

• CenturyLink takes full responsibility for user policies, administration and password management enforcement.
• CenturyLink confirms the initial install and basic functionality using an OS image built on vendor-recommended best-practices and years of industry experience.
• Managed instances initiate automation processes to update the OS to meet standards and requirements defined by the customer.

PATCHING & UPDATES

• Available support for all critical and vendor-recommended patches — only OS vendor-recommended patches are installed.
• Customers have full control to define scheduled patching cycles.
• Automated systems track change requests, perform patch management and provide detailed reports.

VENDOR & CHANGE MANAGEMENT

• CenturyLink maintains ownership and management responsibility for the customer’s underlying VM and OS.
• The customer is freed from managing daily OS-level functions, SPLAs and licenses for Linux and Windows OSs.
• CenturyLink takes full responsibility of the license, regardless of where the instance lives.
• Transparency and Compliance: CenturyLink performs changes for the customer on defined instances and tracks all the changes for auditing purposes.

The third main feature is Cloud Optimization, which reduces overhead cost via automation and gives customers a competitive advantage through single bill consolidation. Enables procurement and management of Azure cloud instances alongside CenturyLink Cloud services, all from a single platform.

CONSOLIDATED BILLING AND ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT

• Auto-discover pre-existing instance of Microsoft Azure subscriptions.
• Report on CenturyLink Cloud services, Azure Classic, ARM and Azure Stack.
• Cloud Application Manager will also show costs for non-VM resources.
• With the Cloud Edition, pay for only what you need: per hour, per service.

PURCHASE MICROSOFT AZURE DIRECTLY

• Virtual Machines and Virtual Machine Scale Sets and Virtual Networking.
• Storage: blog, file, and disk.
• Alternatively, use Cloud Application Manager to manage pre-existing Azure instances.

AUTOMATED DEPLOYMENT

• Automate Azure deployments to reduce complexity and improve delivery time.
• Natively deploy Azure virtual machine, web and work roles from Cloud Application Manager via API.

WHAT ARE MANAGED SERVICES?

You might be wondering what managed services are and how this works in the data center. Below is a checklist of what is in CenturyLink’s wheelhouse from a managed services perspective.

Through CenturyLink’s managed services teams, they can do any of these and more.

WHY WOULD WE SELL MANAGED SERVICES?

CenturyLink Managed Services secure and optimize your network, applications, and infrastructure so you can compete at the speed of business.

Extensive Portfolio

• Single source, turnkey managed services provider offering end-to-end solutions
• Experienced and accountable teams who thrive in IT complexity
• 24×7 follow-the-sun customer support simplifies IT management

Flexible & Agile Delivery Models

• We build for scale, managing services across more than 60 global data centers
• Certified experts improve agility by securing networks, infrastructure, and application environments
• Better financial models and controls help track budgets and predict IT costs

Increased Business Performance

• Keep pace with global competition with scalable IT initiatives
• Collaborative partnership for bimodal IT and digital transformation initiatives
• With simplified management and costs, businesses can focus on market expansion, improved customer experience, and new business opportunities

CCA MANAGED SERVICES ENGAGEMENT MODEL

Take a look above at CenturyLink’s new engagement model which is built around Managed Services. If you envision yourself as the partner or partner owner, when you find an opportunity you will bring that to your T-CAs, at that point if it is a transactional opportunity your T-CAs point of contact will help you with an engineering quote and close that deal as fast as possible. The goal is to keep that moving along, so they can recognize the revenue. If the opportunity through a discussion with your T-CAs turns out to be more complex, a managed services specialist will be brought in. The managed services specialist will then begin to engage the resources that are listed on the right-hand side of the chart above.

What is important for you to realize is you have a single point of contact in your T-CAs, and you also have resources that potentially were not there in the past. The resources include a hybrid IT specialists whose job is to help sell the private or public cloud offerings, colocation specialists who present benefits of CTL colocation offerings. Solutions architects are also available who handle complex workloads involving multiple solutions and products, and finally, CenturyLink also has client engagement managers who can uncover additional partner and customer needs.

The model below also shows customers that CenturyLink’s platform can accommodate all of the customer’s application needs. The key point being that CenturyLink’s portfolio is capable of handling applications, and ultimately that they are agnostic about where that application goes. CenturyLink wants to have a consultative approach, so the application is placed in the appropriate platform and works efficiently.

Successful UCAAS Strategies

As an end user of Unified-Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS), you always want to make sure what you have selected is working properly. When purchasing a hosted solution, the voice quality in the deployment must work, because if it doesn’t it will not be a great situation for you or the supplier. We all want the same thing: Success. Today we discuss ways to mitigate these issues.

WHEN LAYERING HOSTED VOIP OVER THE INTERNET, REMEMBER:

• Although this is the most popular method, it will always be a best effort solution, therefore certain challenges will present themselves.
• Voice does not consume very much bandwidth, but it does need to be there in sequence and without any gaps.
• Jitter, packet loss, and latency are the symptoms of VoIP issues.

DON’T JUST KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED

Hosted UC success does not start by hoping things will go well. Guessing that you will have enough bandwidth to support the addition of Hosted VoIP will not ensure success. There are a number of factors that determine how much bandwidth you use.  These include your footprint, other applications, or there might even be a certain time throughout the day where all the bandwidth is being used. Outages are caused by competing data. So what can you do to be more accurate?

VXSupportLine (also known as TrustedSky) will help give you a direction and a clearer idea of how hosted voice will perform in your environment. Beacons are installed in the data center of hosted voice providers. The VXSupportLine portal can be accessed through a browser by you. This application will allow you to send test calls across the internet to the specific data center. A dashboard will display a real-time snapshot of your network and help you get an idea of what issues may arise should you deploy a hosted UC solution. This will give you more credibility within your organization and help instill more confidence in the solution you are presenting. Companies with a beacon installed are Jive, Vonage, RingCentral, and Broadview, and we can look forward to more additions in the future.

Alternative options also include carriers who have their own testing.

• Two great examples of carriers in the portfolio who provide such a tool are 8×8 and RingCentral. Their tool is meant to help get a snapshot to see what is going on and figure out if there is any chance they will run into any firewall issues, and if everything is working properly.
• Broadview also has a tool, the difference is that this software is actually downloaded and then will run tests for a week. This provides deeper insight as it continuously tests the environment. It also makes closing a deal easier because you can reassure senior management about the solution because of the extensive testing.

VXSuite hosted UC Assessment is another option. The way this assessment works is by having a probe gather information from the router, and will then proceed to make test calls. The amount of calls made can be customized to the customer’s needs. This makes it easier to emulate what potential impact hosted UC will have over their environment. Although this option is very similar to the others in the sense that it does share the majority of the same concepts, it has one huge difference: when you perform the assessment with VXSuite’s tool it will be agnostic, and it will not test from the user’s location to the provider’s. That means that this is amazing tool you can use if you have not chosen a provider yet. Regardless, the main questions we want answered are ‘will hosted UC be the right solution for the customer in general?’ and ‘will their network support this?’

VXSuite will test from the customer’s location into a Microsoft Azure Cloud driven location and will do east coast, west coast, or both, depending on the scenario. This will provide visibility to a generic scenario and what it might look like. To learn more about pricing, ask us. Each solution will be different and needs to be designed to fit your needs.

OTHER STRATEGIES

What are the next steps once you’ve used either one of the tools we have discussed and received the results?

If everything looks great after the tests:

• Close the deal!

You will not always get the results you hoped for. If the results are not great, you always have other options:

• Dedicated bandwidth for voice strategy: suggest that they bring in secondary internet dedicated to hosted UC only.
• SDN Strategy: SDN can help you prioritize voice and other applications across the internet.
• New Network Strategy: Private connections or other type of network adjustments can also be suggested, although these are usually solutions that revolve around large deals that have a lot of end user support.

When dealing with this type of technology the most important things is to be able to preview what will happen once you layer hosted UC over the internet. Testing is critical, and will help reduce the amount of issues you will see down the line. Whether you are using VXSupportLine, other tools the carrier provides, or the VXSuite hosted UC Assessment you can be assured these are all better solutions than just guessing. These are also a great thing to have access to when you are trying to close a deal for an that might be unsure, as it gives you more credibility and will in turn reassure the leadership that you are getting them something that works!

To try it out yourself simply ask here....

Managed Services

Why Buy From A Master Agent?

What follows is expert advice from my friend Sean Goines....

Time for some true confessions: The first telecom sales company I worked for was a multi-level marketing company.

There, I said it.

Although “technically” we sold long distance services, the *real* money was made convincing other people to sign-up underneath you. I’m sure you’ve no doubt been approached several times by network marketers swearing that their MLM is ground floor and that you’re life is going to change dramatically for the better. Maybe you’ve even joined one!

For me, the real comedy—and irony—happened when two rival network marketers from the same company would fight over a recruit. I loved watching people try to pitch the same opportunity differently and try to sell the prospect on why their downline was the superior choice.

DO YOU NEED A MASTER AGENT?

The role of master agent often seems to mimic the MLM model. They all have contracts with the same suppliers, and they all pay residual commission. On the surface, they all look like different downlines of the same MLM. Many agents I talk to think master agents are a waste and that it’s better to work with carriers and cloud providers directly.

This begs the question: Do you need a master agent and if so, how do you choose?

MASTER AGENTS MAKE QUOTAS

Almost every network and cloud provider requires its partners to hit monthly, quarterly, and/or yearly sales targets. For years, agents believed that these quotas wouldn’t be enforced and they were—until recently—correct. But with the increased consolidation of network and cloud providers, the new regimes (and their attorneys) have been actively sending out cancellation notices and cutting off commissions to partners not meeting the revenue commitments they signed up for years ago.

The best way to protect yourself from this fate is to sell under the umbrella of a master agent who is consistently on the top of the sales stack. Top producers do themselves a double-favor by safely meeting their sales quotas and at the same time making themselves indispensable members of the provider’s outside sales channel. There is safety in consistent production and favorable contracts that only top procuring master agents can negotiate.

MASTER AGENTS DO COMMISSION RESEARCH

Unfortunately commission errors happen. Sometimes the systems get confused, people get confused, or worst case, accounts are stolen by rogue members of a provider’s direct sales team. A good master agent has software, audits, and procedures that can catch, fix, and seek back pay for the errors that it will find on YOUR commission report.

Without a master agent (with a robust commission assurance team), plan to spend one hour per $50K in billing you sell, and more if you’re owed back commission.

KNOWLEDGE DRIVES SUCCESS

With so many supplier options available, it’s difficult for agents to keep everything straight!

A good master agent will take the numerous hours required to both learn the many suppliers, understand their differences, and when to recommend one over the other. Even better, some master agents hold weekly training calls, organize in-person training conferences, and will even talk to your clients for you in order maximize your chances of closing a deal.

Make sure the master you work with teaches YOU a thing or two about the suppliers you’re pitching, or has an automated pricing tool to provide additional assistance.

Human knowledge combined with intelligent software will make you unbeatable.

CHOSE THE RIGHT MASTER AGENT FOR YOU

So you’ve decided you’re going to use a Master Agent. How do you choose which is right for you?

Choosing the right master agent is sort of like dating.

On the surface, we all kind of look alike. But dig a little deeper and you realize the details matter.

You want to look for a master agent who makes you bigger and better, not just one who takes you out for dinner once in awhile and pesters you for more business!

You want to go beyond the MLM peer-pressure sales tactics and look for concrete tools and services that help you scale.

A MASTER AGENT FOCUSED ON YOUR SUCCESS

Today’s technology is changing at a rapid pace. On-going education is crucial for you to stay ahead of the curve. FInd a master agent with a consistent training calendar. While attending two- or three-day events can be exciting and a great way to immerse yourself in the latest research, it can be a bit overwhelming. Look for a master agent that offers not only an annual summit, but weekly training to keep you on your A-game all year.

Additionally, sales success involves knowing your customer. Find a master agent with strong customer research, client interaction and implementation support to help you move your clients through the sales process.

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR A MASTER AGENT

You take your business seriously and you need a master agent who is aligned with your business goals.

As you are looking for a master agent, here are some questions to ask in your interview process.

1. Will I have a dedicated support team to call for questions, quotes, and support, or will I call into a central helpdesk?
2. Do you have tools to make me more efficient in preparing quotes and finding the right services for my customer?
3. What are your areas of expertise? If you have a strong client base in a particular vertical or product set, find a master agent that complements and supports that.
4. What other services do you offer to help me win deals? Do you have engineers, project managers, big deal teams, or marketing support?
5. How can you help me get my new business off the ground?

These are just a few focused questions to ask when choosing a master agent. What other questions will you ask?

TELARUS COMPLIMENTS YOUR BUSINESS

Most masters do the basics, and do them well. But if you want a master agent that supports your success in the best way possible, look for a company that invests in their partners and takes ownership in their success.

Here at Telarus we are focused on building tools and service departments which fundamentally change the very definition of a master agent. With the support we provide we can literally become your sales department, customer service department, engineering department, and even your credit union.

To give you an idea of services and tools you can look for, here is a list of things that we offer our partners to help them sell more:

1. Automated pricing tools (coax, Ethernet, T1, PRI, Satellite, 4G)
2. Mobile apps with fiber maps, supplier contacts, and up-to-date sales numbers
3. Free circuit monitoring on every circuit sold through Telarus
4. Carrier-neutral sales engineering (network, UCaaS, phone systems, and more)
5. White-labeled customer account management (renewals, moves, adds, changes, bill review)
6. Commission advance programs (equivalent to an SMB loan)
7. Flexible commission programs (up-front vs residuals)
8. Demand generation (for qualifying partners)
9. Marketing and graphic art assistance
10. Weekly training calls
11. In-person training and networking events
12. Project management
13. MDF funds
14. Ability to pay referral partners on behalf of our agents
15. CRM software (quotes, proposals, orders, commission history, all in one place)
16. White-labeled sales reps to close deals for you

PARTNERS IN SUCCESS

That’s what a true partnership looks like, and how the telecom, cloud, and UC game is going to be played going forward. Don’t fall for the MLM tactics that are still used in this industry today. Make your master earn the commission they keep. Put them to work for you and watch your business explode, without the risk of working direct with a carrier!

If you’d like to explore this topic more, take a second and send me a private LinkedIn message and we’ll join forces to help you dominate in the network, UC, and cloud space. You can also call our partner hotline at 877-346-3232.