8 Technical Points to Consider When Evaluating a Potential Cloud Customer

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1 8 Technical Points to Consider When Evaluating a Potential Cloud Customer Contact Telegraph Road, Suite 120 Bingham Farms, MI CLOUD ( ) CloudAny.com Anywhere. Anytime. Any Device.

2 8 Technical Points to Consider When Evaluating a Potential Cloud Customer So here you are, walking into your first cloud sales opportunity. Are you ready? You have closed Managed Services deals for years. Surely, this cannot be much different? The cloud can serve everyone, right? The truth is that the cloud can be a huge advantage for many organizations, but it is not for everyone. Certain traits make some companies ready for the cloud, while others are still waiting for technology or business shifts to happen. As an IT Services Provider you find yourself in no man s land. How do you determine if there is a real opportunity that will benefit both the customer and you? Is your customer ready for the cloud? Here are 8 Important Technical Considerations About the Author Drew Sanford is Chief Technology Officer of CloudAny. Drew has over 20 years of Information Services solution design, implementation and management experience. His vision is to enable companies with technology to give them sustainable competitive advantages in the marketplace. He has previously served as the outsourced CIO/CTO for numerous organizations. For the past 15 years, he has been the CIO and then COO of IT that Works (South). He is certified in numerous disciplines with many vendors including virtualization and cloud architecture. Drew has also co-authored the book Computer Services Ungeeked. Learn more about Drew 1 Connectivity Today, many companies already have fast connectivity to the Internet. Fifteen years ago, IT Solution Providers often found themselves convincing companies of the benefits of plugging in. Now it is more about how to successfully use the connectivity they have. For a business to take full advantage of the cloud, connectivity is crucial. The reliability, size and quality of the pipe to a cloud hosting provider can often determine the success or failure of a cloud implementation. As you are evaluating a potential customer, ask these questions: Do they have redundant connectivity to the Internet? As medium to large companies move to the cloud and shift critical business operations offsite, having a redundant connectivity solution that does not share the same physical path can be important. Many organizations can add redundant services without large investments. Try looking at using traditional services from a Telco for one solution and cable or other technology for the other. Each carrier often promises 99.9% uptime (potentially 8.5 hours

3 of downtime a year). Adding a second carrier on a separate backbone statistically reduces this downtime to less than 1 minute a year. How much data do they use? Larger organizations use more data. This may sound obvious, but many people forget to re-evaluate their bandwidth needs as they plan their move to the cloud. Make sure your cloud provider is using a solution that uses data efficiently. Microsoft s Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), while easy to implement, is not very efficient. RDP connections have been found to use 150 or more KB per connection as users browse the Web across their hosted desktops. Make sure your provider uses a technology like Citrix XenApp or XenDesktop. These technologies move the bandwidth requirements down to KB per user and are much more efficient at delivering in low bandwidth situations. In either case, budget bandwidth requirements into your customer scenario. Larger organizations may also need to implement hardware compression capabilities for more effective bandwidth utilization. Additionally, your cloud service provider may also support solutions like NetScaler Branch Repeater that will compress the data stream between your client s location and the data center. 2 Is it Time for a Technology Refresh? Businesses constantly have to upgrade systems to keep up with the rollout of new software. Often due to the costs, a business may be behind the curve, and their human resources have to wait on older systems to serve them the information they need to be productive. In many cases, hosted desktops can use existing, on-premise systems to connect to the cloud without sacrificing speed. Older, out-of-date machines can be used to connect to cloud desktops until the machines die. Then they can be replaced with small-footprint thin clients. Since the processor on the local machine has very little to do with the delivery of the desktop, companies are able to ride their local investment much farther. When necessary, replacing the on-premise desktop with a thin or zero client has several advantages. Generally these machines are physically smaller, so they take less space on or under the desk. They use one-tenth the power of a traditional desktop. And, they require less support than a traditional desktop. When your desktop is in the cloud, it is up to the cloud service provider to ensure that there are enough resources to make the desktop run well. Additionally, the cloud service provider can deliver the latest Microsoft applications with software assurance at a predictable, fixed monthly fee. 3 Remote Workforce, Multi-Location and Mobility Does your prospect have a large remote workforce or key principals in the business that work long hours from home or away from the office? Do they support remote offices away from the central corporate systems? Either of these makes for great scenarios in the cloud. For many businesses the opportunity to uncouple hiring and access to corporate systems from traditional brick and mortar

4 locations is a liberating thought. To be able to place employees wherever they are located with all the tools and systems they would have in the office creates a powerful synergy for the organization and the employee. This allows a remote workforce to stop worrying about the tools available to them and focus on the job they are performing. In many multi-office business environments, supporting the infrastructure necessary for remote office locations is challenging and often poorly implemented. Most Internet connections are asynchronous meaning that the upload and download speeds are different. Download speeds are typically much greater than upload speeds. If you maintain a server in one location, remote users can only access information at the upload speed of the server location there may not be enough bandwidth for users to work effectively. Cloud solutions offer the ability to have location agnostic support. They will work the same no matter where the user is and are built from the ground up to work this way. The engineering is already done. 4 Specific Industry Privacy and Security Concerns The legal landscape is always changing, faster in some industries than others. For example, the Financial, Medical and Legal industries have specific legal and regulatory requirements on the storing and transfer of data. Always make sure your solution meets the specific needs of your customer s industry. HIPAA, FINRA and other industry specific requirements may guide or require modification of the solutions selected. 5 Applications Require Specific Hardware Some customers have applications and hardware that cannot operate in the cloud well, if at all. Manufacturing environments often have PLCs and other hardware that directly interface with local systems to report on real-time production. These systems help make on-the-spot critical decisions on how to tool and manage the use of resources. Due to the critical business nature and speed of the systems, operations with heavy local resource usage require either an onsite solution or a creative, hybrid approach to the cloud. In a hybrid model some systems remain onsite, while others from the cloud integrate with the onsite systems to deliver reporting and other services. For example, in a manufacturing environment the shop floor control systems may be located onsite. The sales and administrative functions could use the cloud for reporting and analysis tools that support the management and planning process. These users are no longer tied to the manufacturing location. 6 Custom Applications Some companies have custom applications that were developed specifically for them or their industry. Always check to see if such applications can be moved, and if they require local resources to operate.

5 Sometimes developers do not consider the needs of different business environments in creating software. They may tie software to specific on-premise systems, without regard for the needs of a multiuser environment (like terminal services). Or they may provide licensing that is only legal on specific hardware. These are all hurdles to successful cloud implementations. When dealing with custom applications, always check on the availability of SaaS commercially developed software solutions that may meet the need. Customers may pay to develop applications and never again look to the market for replacements. Competitive advantage may be the goal for some custom applications, but they are often more expensive to support, maintain and recover in the case of a failure. handled. Creating a bottleneck to communication between departments will not serve the customer relationship. 8 Printing and Scanning Always document all printer and scanner makes and models. A good cloud partner is going to be able to interface out-of-thebox with almost all printers. Every so often, especially if the printer has specific capabilities, special drivers will be needed. Having the information handy makes resolving these situations fast and nearly painless. Find out whether people using their cloud desktop from offsite will need to print to office printers. Scanners should always be planned for and tested prior to go-live. Special software is often required to support scanners. This should be implemented at the customer site in advance and the process documented so the customer is ready to start using it during go-live. 7 Graphical Development Some departments or businesses, such as graphic design and 3D engineering, rely heavily on graphical systems to perform daily operations. Always take these departments into account in planning for a cloud solution. Often heavy graphical use can be dealt with in a hybrid model. Providing onsite storage and offsite backup of these systems while serving the rest of the employees with a hosted solution can work extremely well, but must be planned out. You have to think through potential issues with data sharing, backup, and any custom needs and make sure they are In addition to the make and model of the printers and scanners, it would be useful to get an approximate monthly usage for each. Conclusion The cloud is an amazing opportunity that can allow each reseller to accelerate onboarding times and roll out new services to its customer base. As with any technology, it will take careful implementation planning and management. You cannot just throw a switch and the customer is live. You need to understand your customer and how they use their systems, and then with your cloud partner bring them into the flexibility that is the cloud.

6 A message from our sponsor CloudAny At CloudAny we have been marketing, selling and using cloud for a long time, and we are now ready to share our expertise with you to make you successful in your cloud business. CloudAny offers Business Computing as a Service (BCaaS pronounced because ) an integrated, brandable, self-provisioning solution available only through resellers. With CloudAny as your partner, you avoid the capital expense of building an inhouse infrastructure, and you can lower costs and speed time-to-market by leveraging our experience and proven infrastructure. We have been focused on developing and offering cloud services since Our proven, enterprise-class infrastructure enables you to deliver cloud services to clients in any industry. There are many cloud partners out there offering a variety of solutions. With CloudAny, your solution carries your brand, and your clients are always yours. CloudAny is invisible. Are you ready to lead your clients into the future? Learn more about the CloudAny Partner Program Register for a CloudAny Partnership Webinar Contact Telegraph Road, Suite 120 Bingham Farms, MI CLOUD ( ) CloudAny.com CloudAny provides the flexibility for you to rapidly and consistently provide solutions for your clients. Our self-provisioning control panel can be used by you and your staff, or extended to your clients for them to add resources as required. CloudAny will assist you with marketing, sales, and education. We help you avoid the typical pitfalls of starting a new cloud business while you achieve 30+ percent margins. Anywhere. Anytime. Any Device. About CloudAny CloudAny is a Tier One provider of cloud services, including Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, hosted desktops and hosted application servers. CloudAny solutions are sold exclusively through its Partner Channel Program where partners receive sales, marketing and technical training as well as 2nd level technical support for their end-user clients. CloudAny has been a Tier One Cloud Provider since 2006 with regional offices in Detroit and Nashville. CloudAny is a Citrix Cloud Service Provider and holds multiple Silver competencies as a Microsoft Partner, as well as certifications with other technology partners. Learn more at