Cloud Solution Provider Checklist For Choosing The Right Partner

If you're ready to start adopting one or more cloud services, you need to feel confident that the vendor you've entrusted with your business-critical applications and data will keep them safe and provide proper support. That isn't necessarily easy, though. According to a recent report by IDG2, one in three IT leaders found that the provider ultimately failed to meet expectations for support.

In this post, we will guide you through the factors that should drive your decision-making and explore some of the difficulties you might experience along the way.

Definitely, it is important to have data on the cloud which gives immense scalability and simplicity and manageability of business. And to do this you will need a very strong consultant who can be a part of your business. Unfortunately, choosing an optimal partner for that service has become a tough decision to make.

The cloud provider may have all the technological prowess that ticks all your boxes but may fall short on their business health and profile. To ensure future operations run smoothly, an increased focus should be put on the public reputation of the company, their staff adequacy, and their financial standing.

The provider should have a track record of stability and be in a healthy financial position with sufficient capital to operate successfully over the long term.

The provider should have a formal management structure, established risk management policies and a formal process for assessing third-party service providers and vendors. Check the provider's reputation and see who its partners are. Find out its level of cloud experience. Read reviews and talk to customers whose situation is similar to yours. Business knowledge and technical know-how. The provider should understand your business and what you are looking to do and be able to match it up with their technical expertise. The provider should be able to validate compliance with all of your requirements through a third-party audit.

Make sure the provider has documented and formal processes for requesting, logging, approving, testing and accepting changes. Even if you don't plan to use a hybrid cloud initially, you should make sure the provider can support this model. It has advantages that you may wish to exploit at a later time.

They should have plans and processes in place documenting how they plan to communicate with customers during times of disruption including timeliness, prioritization and severity level assessment of issues.

The right partner can help you take advantage of economies of scale, deliver a robust, dispersed platform that's reliable and innovative, and offer options so you can pick the package that works for your specific business needs. Above all, safeguard your flexibility going forward so you can adopt emerging technologies, innovate, and differentiate your business.

Future is business on cloud and those who have taken decision timely enjoying advancement and encashment of their decision. But when the entire business is on the cloud then it comes with threat on data security. Migrating data to the cloud is not only enough but managing and making it secure is very important. Right cloud partner can help and take your all the burden. You first have to have enough time understand your business and need of cloud. Many times it has been seen that organization do not provide their time in an investigation which harms their business only in future.

The partner you choose will manage one of your greatest assets- your data. Take the time to investigate a prospective cloud consultant thoroughly. Though the selection of a vendor is tedious, I hope this post may help.

By Shawn Millar

For a comparison of available cloud providers, including free assistance to design a custom cloud computing network that meets your specific application requirements, simply ask at the below link.  It's as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Cloud Computing Solutions

Why Cloud Brokers Are The Future

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” goes the aphorism by Mark Twain. Looking at historical examples can be instructive. As an example, railroad development in the 1800’s was very similar to the network buildout of the 1990s and consolidation of today. We had only to look at history to see that overbuilding, lack of interchangeability, subsequent regulation and consolidation, and in some cases nationalization might be factors in national network build outs.

The Romans used to say, "to see the future, look to the past,” and it’s in the past we learn why the Cloud favors the broker model and will continue to do so. In 1771 Richard Arkwright assembled the first modern factory in Derbyshire, England.  Arkwright was known as the father of the industrial revolution not because of his textile related inventions and patents, but because of the factory system he created centralizing people and equipment. This centralized system turned out to be extremely efficient when compared to the cottage spinning and weaving each family or town craftspeople performed.  Centralized machinery meant fewer machinists were needed, spare parts were on hand, and the work was uniform and of high quality.

BREAK FIX REDUCED

Just like a factory, services in the Cloud do not require presence at the customer location to perform services. Service issues, settings adjustments, and upgrades can largely be performed by the provider which significantly reduces the need for on-site personnel. VAR models based on break/fix are now suffering because of this reality.

EMPHASIS ON MARKETING AND SALES

Factories created so much efficiency that by 1812 the cost to manufacture cotton yarn had dropped by 90% http://industrialrevolution.sea.ca/innovations.html!. The challenge now was how to sell the abundance of surplus produced which would require marketing and sales efforts. The Cloud has created a similar situation of abundance.  Software and computing cost almost nothing; the challenge providers have is selling and marketing their plentiful, high-margin product.

Cloud brokers focus on relationships and selling which are the primary services needed in a Cloud sales environment. These are the competencies of a partner that will be of primary importance to a Cloud services provider.

NOT EVERYTHING IS AUTOMATED

Some may argue the sale of cloud services will also be automated, and while that’s true for many apps you may buy personally, whenever there are complexity and choice, advisory services will appear.  As an example, look at the recent rise of “robo-advisors” like Betterment and Wealthfront which use algorithms to execute trades on behalf of customers.  Betterment has now added an advisory network as have the “robo” advisory services provided by Personal Capital, E-Trade, Vanguard, and others. While many things can be automated, not even Amazon has been able to automate the relationship provided by a trusted advisor.  

ADDITIONAL BROKER SERVICES

Customers will need additional services from third party advisors such as implementation and  customization services which will largely be advisory, software integration, and monitoring and management services. Some of these services may be provided by implementation specialists who will work with providers to create a custom fit for the customer.  Cloud brokers will either partner or will add this type of services to their offering as well as provide ongoing monitoring of service to ensure the quality of a customer’s experience and to ensure adoption and retain and grow customers.  

The modern factory’s product is purchased through marketing channels based on customer choice. lCoud services will be purchased through the channel the customer desires and based on the historical precedent and the trends we see today, that channel is increasingly the broker channel.

To have a custom cloud computing solution designed for you and YOUR specific needs...simply ask at the link below.

Custom Cloud Solution

A Cloud Network Solution For All Seasons...Do You Know What It Is?

With the emphasis in today's world on a global economy, the demographics of the workforce continue to change. It’s very clear that more and more people are now working outside of their offices more often, which means people looking for ways to stay connected with their customers. An industry first, the 8x8 Communications Cloud empowers everyone in your enterprise to be more connected and productive no matter where they are....anywhere in the world.

The rapid shift to Cloud is happening because of a number of factors. The reality is on-premises implementations require IT teams to work on various activities at each location, but with cloud solutions administration is centralized. This saves time on daily activities allowing the IT team to focus on strategic efforts. Results-driven companies rely on the 8x8 Communications Cloud to reduce complexity and cost, improve individual and team productivity and performance, and enhance the overall customer experience.

As of 2017, there are about 400 million telephony users globally, by most estimates this market has been tapped into less than ten percent. From 2016 to 2018, Cloud Communications users will grow at 65 percent a year. This is a fifty billion dollar market which has forty billion dollars of UCaaS opportunity and ten billion contact center opportunities. It’s a very exciting time to be in the Cloud Communication space....for both providers and end users.

 

Back in 2002 when 8x8 began offering Cloud Communications, they catered mainly to small business customers, but soon they began to see interest growing within midmarket customers. About two years ago 8x8 noticed a real change in the market, it was no longer about whether the enterprise customer would go cloud or premise, but about which cloud. Today only 5 percent of the large businesses in the US  have adopted UCaaS, which means there is huge opportunity gap in this space.  Early adopters have leaped out in front of their competition.  That competitive gap widens more the longer an enterprise delays migrating to a cloud network environment.

WHY 8X8?

8x8 is a global communication provider with over 47,000 businesses and over one thousand employees mainly between their San Jose, CA headquarters and their UK, Romania and New York facilities. They are the only communication vendor that has been a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for five years running. 8x8 went public in 1997; they have been growing 20-25 percent a year since and have been profitable for about twenty seven consecutive quarters. They are the only Cloud Communications provider with a single solution. Some unique benefits only 8x8 provides:

• Single Solution & Single Provider: Not Reliant on thirdparty. Seamless platform integrations and single source of resolution.
• Global, Secure & Enterprise Grade: Most secure platform in industry (HIPAA, FISMA, PCI, and more), 12 data centers, 120 plue counties geo-routing, end-to-end SLA.
• Advanced Reporting & Analytics: Every call scored, reporting from every device, and industry leading analytics (SFDC, supervisor, and more)
• Quality Management: Intelligence from every call, quality management, address gaps in skills, surface issues.

Enterprise customers need integrations whether that’s with SalesForce or their proprietary CRM solution, 8x8 leads  the pack in the ability to provide these integrations. A very interesting market these days is the chat market. When you look at an enterprise customer base you will notice they use various chat vendors in different parts of the organization. 8x8 can now provide a conduit between all of those chats so all parts of the organization can talk seamlessly amongst themselves while still using their favorite chat platform versus trying to get them all converted into a single platform.   

To learn more about what 8X8 specifically can do for your enterprise cloud network efforts...and to learn what other options may be a good fit for your needs...simply ask us at the link below. Our assistance is free...and as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Cloud Network Solutions

How You Can Have A Personalized Cloud Solution AND White Glove Service Anywhere In The World

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.

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, 24x7 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

Standard and Optional & Management Features: 

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

Standard and Management Features:

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

Standard and Optional Features:

To have a custom Rapidscale cloud solution designed for you simply ask at the link below....it's as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Personalized Cloud Solution