Are Frustrations with Microsoft Exchange Driving You to The Cloud? Introduction

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1 Are Frustrations with Microsoft Exchange Driving You to The Cloud? As a leading venture capital firm, Benchmark operates in a fast-paced environment. Timely communication is critical so we cannot afford to have our down. Coyote Creek s RMM service delivers 24 x 7 x 365 reliability and gives us total confidence in our Exchange environment so we can focus on our investments. Michael Traski, IT Manager, Benchmark Capital Introduction Ask any executive, manager or employee which application is most critical to the functioning of their business and there s a very good chance they will say our system. Rightly or wrongly, has become the glue that holds communications together in most companies. Whether it s formal corporate communications; messages that drive critical workflows; s carrying attachments; scheduling messages to set up meetings; critical project updates or the endless torrent of updates, news, views, etc., has become an indispensible tool for every company. But, like most tools that we depend on, individuals, companies and IT departments have a love-hate relationship with their system. Until recently, for most companies there was very little choice in their systems Microsoft Exchange was (and still is) the de facto standard in the corporate world. However, with the advent of Cloud comput- ing, there are now several choices and the marketing of the Cloud vendors has played on the love-hate relationship of Microsoft users with their system as much as it has stressed the lower acquisition cost and total cost of ownership claimed by the Cloud vendors. But is this really the case? Is the choice for companies that need a robust, scalable and secure system simply a choice between the known problems of their existing Exchange system or the promise and unknowns of the Cloud? Or is there a solution that may deliver the best of both worlds? This Coyote Creek Business Brief discusses the issues of on-premise, Cloud and managed systems. It also provides a cost comparison tool and decision making framework to help you make the most informed decision about which option is best for your company. 1 tel coyotecrk.com

2 The Business Challenge In a recent Coyote Creek webinar, Executive Administrators voted lost productivity due to unreliable and calendaring one of their major challenges. Lost productivity takes many forms such as: meetings these issues when the IT department is called out to resolve employee and scheduling issues Various consulting firms have attempted to put a value on the cost of these issues. This is a challenging task since costs range from the hard cost of lost administrative and IT time to the soft or opportunity cost of executives missing key internal or external meetings. However, an estimate of 1 hour combined administrative and IT time per reported issue is a reasonable estimate. Therefore, if a company suffers 5 such occurrences every day at a loaded hourly cost of $120 per hour, this amounts to a cost of over $150,000 per year. The IT Challenge is a politically charged IT issue and problems with and calendaring - whether it is the entire system being down or an intermittent, hard to trace problem assume a disproportionate importance in most users perceptions of IT s performance. While IT managers acknowledge and understand these issues, in an environment of reduced IT budgets and pressure to make those costs that can t be reduced at least predictable, managing an system presents a series of unique and formidable challenges to IT. For example, the reality of most systems is that, allowing for planned down-time, they achieve close to 99.99% reliability, so how much additional support and technical resources can IT dedicate to solving the last-mile reliability issues and providing round-theclock user support when they have so many other priorities? Additionally, because is such an accessible and therefore vulnerable application, it is critical that IT stay up-to-date with the latest releases, not just the major new versions but also the myriad security patches that must be applied to ensure systems integrity and reliability. Over the last few years this problem has become even more critical and complex because is being accessed not just from within a secured environment but also from an ever-growing list of smart phones, tablet computers and unsecured home computers. Not only does resolving these problems have a hard cost to the business, they also carry other soft costs and other negative impacts. First, the business cannot run efficiently, resulting in missed deadlines and people having to play catch up in their own time. Second, it leads to frustration and to executive users having a poor perception of the people, processes and performance of their IT department. As challenging or outright unfair as this might be on your over-worked and under-resourced IT team, this is the reality in many companies. Although there are best practices that will address many of these issues (for example, see our blogs on White List devices at for more details), there is no getting around the fact that release, patch and device management is a major operational issue for any large-scale installation that carries significant direct costs (e.g. for test and staging hardware) as well as labor costs. In fact, a rule of thumb that we have developed over the years, is that it takes one full-time person (or their cost-equivalent) to patch and manage a 100 servers 2 tel coyotecrk.com

3 whether they are doing so on a manual basis or using a system management tool for this task. Is The Cloud a Solution? Cloud vendors have been quick to publish easily understood cost calculators that show their price advantage versus a Microsoft Exchange on-premise solution. A widely quoted study by TechRepublic.com claimed comparative costs per 100 users to be $13,200 for a Microsoft on-premise solution versus $5,000 for a Cloudbased Google Apps Premium service. In the face of this price pressure, Microsoft has launched their Cloud-based Exchange service at a price point intended to be competitive with Google. However tempting the Cloud solution may appear to be, there are many issues that must be seriously considered when a company contemplates such as move, these include: Reliability although the Cloud infrastructure is becoming more stable all the time, recent Google Mail and Amazon outages have reminded us that the Cloud is not bullet-proof and that outages will still occur and must be planned for. Business Continuity all companies should have a back-up or business continuity strategy in place which could mean parallel infrastructures, multiple Cloud service providers or even a Cloud to Ground solution where the data is shared and synced between Cloud and on-premise systems. Disaster Recovery similarly, all companies should have a disaster recovery plan because, like it or not, data centers are susceptible to both manmade and natural disasters. Migration most companies of any size have terabytes of data and archives, user profiles, calendars, etc. Thought must be given to how this data will be migrated to a Cloud-based system to ensure business continuity and traceability of information. User Knowledge love it or hate it, most users have a competency and comfort level with Microsoft Outlook that minimizes the training and support burden on IT. When considering a Cloud-based option, companies must ensure that pilots, training, roll-out and support processes are in place regardless of whether the client is Outlook or a new system. Functionality Microsoft Outlook is more than an environment both in terms of its original design and the way that people use it. Companies must be careful to ensure they understand the way in which their employees use the system for collaboration, folder sharing, archiving, etc. and that a prospective Cloud-based solution can meet these requirements. Integration many companies integrate their system with other systems, for example, as part of their workflow and approvals processes. These companies must ensure that the same integration capabilities exist in the Cloud-based system and factor in development, testing, and maintenance costs to support this integration. Compliance and Data Protection companies must ensure that, especially for global deployments, they understand the impact of local compliance, privacy and data protection regulations. For example, within the EU, any personal information stored about an individual must be physically located within the EU. While the costs of addressing these issues will vary from company to company, all of these issues must be considered as they carry costs and risks that could negate the apparent cost advantage of the Cloud. On-Premise Bad; Cloud Good? As we have discussed, when it comes to systems, it s not a simple case of On-Premise Bad; Cloud Good. The real issue is not where the service is hosted; it is how does IT deliver the most available and reliable service to its user community with a predictable, affordable cost? 3 tel coyotecrk.com

4 This is a problem that Coyote Creek has been tackling with business users and IT departments for over 10 years. In that time, we have worked for and partnered with IT teams focused on providing a reliable and scalable internal solution. Through this experience, we have learned how complex it can be to operate Microsoft Exchange but also that moving an enterprise to a Cloud-based solution involves levels of risk, complexity and cost that few business or IT executives fully anticipate. delivering the most available and reliable service at a predictable, affordable cost. We also realized that with our highly skilled application engineering teams (all based in the US) and the best-practice processes we have developed over the years, we could architect a repeatable solution at a predictable monthly cost for Microsoft Exchange customers. RMM The Best of Both Worlds Our experience has taught us that there are three key issues that have to be taken into account when assessing solution options people, processes and product. Too often, vendors with large marketing budgets focus the discussion entirely on product issues but the reality is that people and process issues have significantly more bearing on the success of an installation than the product on which it is based. That s why we developed Coyote Creek s Remote Monitoring and Management service (RMM). RMM blends on-premise and remote technologies to provide a best of both worlds solution to the central issue of Threshold-based monitoring alarms are triggered in our 24 x 7 NOC anytime one of these thresholds are exceeded. RMM is a service-based solution that starts out with a discovery process designed to uncover what your organization needs from its infrastructure. For example, what levels of uptime and availability are required; does the system need to be architected to support rapid growth or is cost predictability and containment the major issue? Coyote Creek s RMM service delivers a lot of value. Knowing that the system is being watched 24x7 and maintenance is handled pro-actively gives me tremendous confidence. And I really appreciate having data at my fingertips. Greg Ogle, IT Director, Equinix Key performance indicators are continuously monitored to drive performance and capacity planning and to aid troubleshooting. Once we understand your goals, we work with your IT team to audit and document your Microsoft Exchange infrastructure and update it. Then in line with our best practices we harden your infrastructure to ensure the highest possible availability and reliability. Once this has been done, we take over the day-to-day monitoring and management of the Exchange environment using remote tools and technologies run out of our Network Operations Center. With this in place, we handle antivirus status, backups, capacity plan- 4 tel coyotecrk.com

5 ning, device and patching support, etc. giving clients peace of mind of knowing that Coyote Creek s experts are working 24x7 to ensure the terms of your Service Level Agreement (SLA) are met. That s where our expertise and process around these issues benefits our customers. Unlike internal IT people who may go through an Exchange update cycle once every two or three years and apply patches only when something breaks, Coyote Creek s team lives, eats and sleeps Microsoft Exchange and Outlook. We have developed best practices for all aspects of monitoring, management and support of these applications and we provide pro-active services to keep you ahead of the game and ahead of problems. RMM enables your company to achieve a best of both worlds solution that provides business users with the reliability, availability and, when needed, support that they require along with the following IT benefits: systems service levels organizations system health issues monitoring and management tasks cost control tive planning and expert staff Summary is one of and maybe the only truly mission critical application for most businesses. As the on-premise vs. Cloud-based debate intensifies, it is important that both business users and IT understand the complexities, risks and costs of migrating from a known Microsoft Exchange environment to a Cloud-based system. Coyote Creek s experience is that many of the problems users report with their Microsoft Exchange server and Outlook and scheduling environment can be relatively easy to fix. Coyote Creek s RMM system provides a best of both worlds solution that stabilizes and optimizes your internal Exchange environment and then provides remote 24x7 monitoring, management and support of that environment using the best-practices that we have developed while working with some of the world s most demanding companies. About Coyote Creek Founded in 1998 by a team of former corporate IT professionals, Coyote Creek understands the issues and complexities that are part of large-scale and high-growth IT environments. Pragmatic and vendor neutral, Coyote Creek brings deep expertise to help customers manage technology and project risk, inspiring confidence and creating peace of mind. For more information visit 5 tel coyotecrk.com

6 Appendix A: Coyote Creek Decision Making Considerations 1. Costs based on your answers to the following questions, you should be able to complete this table and make a rough cost comparison between these three options. Issue On-Premise Cloud RMM Cost x number of static mailboxes Cost x number of remote mailboxes Cost for additional storage per mailbox Cost x number of white-list/nonstandard mobile device or client Costs for mail server hardware for test, staging, production environments Software license costs Monitoring and management software costs Monitoring and management labor costs Training costs users Training costs IT Support costs Upgrade costs Data migration costs Integration costs Business Continuity costs Disaster Recovery costs TOTAL 2. SLAs Reliability and Performance a. What are your reliability goals? b. What are your performance (response time) goals? c. What SLAs are in place to guarantee these goals? d. Are the SLAs enforceable? 6 tel coyotecrk.com

7 3. Disaster Recovery a. In the event of a disaster or catastrophic failure at your data center or the data center of your Cloud provider, what are your recovery plans? b. What risks and costs are associated with these plans? 4. Business Continuity a. How will you continue to support based business operations in the event of an outage with your Cloud provider? b. What risks and costs are associated with this plan? 5. Migration a. How many users and how much data has to be migrated? b. What is your Cloud migration strategy? c. Have you quantified the efforts and identified resources for this project? d. What is your contingency plan if the migration plan hits a problem? 6. Integration a. What systems are integrated to your mail system? b. Do similar integration capabilities exist from your Cloud vendor? c. If yes, what migration and testing needs to be done to prove this capability? d. What is the timing and cost of this work? e. If no, what development would be necessary to integrate these systems? f. What would be the ongoing maintenance costs to support this integration? 7. User Training and Support a. What is your plan for piloting the proposed system, winning user buy-in, training, roll-out and support to ensure user adoption? b. How will you provide this training and what costs are associated with this? 8. Functionality a. Have you audited the way in which employees use Microsoft Outlook and ensured that equivalent functionality is available in the proposed system? b. Have you involved power-users in reviewing options and got their input on functionality and user-training issues? 9. Compliance and Data Protection a. Have you researched local compliance, privacy and data protection regulations in all the territories in which you plan to operate the proposed system? b. Can the Cloud vendor certify that they are in compliance with these requirements? 7 tel coyotecrk.com

8 Appendix B: Coyote Creek RMM Options Issue Monitor Maintain Manage 7x24 hour monitoring & alerting X X X Event ticket generation X X X Server health report X X X Monitor backup status X X X Microsoft baseline security analysis X X X Automated service reports X X X Antivirus Definition Status X X X Hardware Asset inventory N/A X X Windows Patch management N/A X X Customer Portal (incl. Ticket Management) N/A X X Level 1 Support T&M X X Level 2 Support T&M T&M X Microsoft License compliance report N/A N/A X Software asset inventory report N/A N/A X Remote Software Deployment N/A N/A X Capacity Planning N/A N/A X Application Support(Exchange) N/A N/A X Custom Reports N/A N/A X 8 tel coyotecrk.com