FireHost Webinar: The Service You Should Expect in the Cloud
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Thomas Jones, Vice President of Client Services at FireHost, gave a presentation on the state of service in the cloud industry and FireHost's unique service delivery model. The presentation covered FireHost's perspective on service, their focus on resolution over just response, ensuring a smooth customer transition, integrating with customer teams to mitigate risk, and wanting to earn customer business each month through quality service. FireHost aims to deliver service that is transparent and fits each customer's specific needs.
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FireHost Webinar: The Service You Should Expect in the Cloud
- 1. June 2014 Great Expectations: The Service You Should Expect in the Cloud Thomas Jones Vice President, Client Services
- 2. Great Expectations: Service in the Cloud Today’s Speakers Great Expectations: Service in the Cloud Thomas Jones Vice President Client Services Ben McCormack Vice President Service Delivery
- 3. Agenda Great Expectations: Service in the Cloud • The State of Service in the Cloud Industry • FireHost’s Perspective and Approach to Service • Service Transparency • FireHost’s Unique Service Delivery Model • How We’re Different • Questions & Answers
- 6. WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT
- 9. We focus on resolution not just response Great Expectations: Service in the Cloud Raving Fans
- 10. Your infrastructure works 99.999% of the time One 9 makes a big difference Great Expectations: Service in the Cloud Raving Fans
- 11. We live in a safe Neighborhood We assess all prospects before they become a part of our environment Great Expectations: Service in the Cloud Raving Fans
- 12. We ensure a smooth transition By assisting in configuring, migrating and tuning new customer environments Great Expectations: Service in the Cloud Raving Fans
- 13. We integrate with your team and mitigate risk Great Expectations: Service in the Cloud Raving Fans
- 14. We want to earn your business every month. Our customers stay because they want to, not because they have to Great Expectations: Service in the Cloud Raving Fans
- 15. &Answers Questions Great Expectations: Service in the Cloud
- 16. Thank You Please visit us at FireHost.com Phone +1 877 262 3473 Great Expectations: Service in the Cloud Email thomas.jones@firehost.com Email benjamin.mccormack@firehost.com
Editor's Notes
- Neil: Hello and welcome to our webinar on service in the cloud. Today we’ll be talking about the levels of service you should expect and demand for optimal cloud performance and security. We’ll leave some time at the end to take your questions, and you can also submit questions during the webinar through the chat feature. To mute your phone, <instructions>.
- Neil: I’d like to introduce our speaker today. I’m Neil Wu Becker and I’ll be moderating our discussion. Thomas Jones, FireHost’s Vice President of Client Services, will be leading today’s session on the service in the cloud industry – the service standards you should expect from your provider.
- Neil: Now let’s take a look at our agenda. We’ll start by looking at the state of service in the industry. Then we’ll go through FireHost’s perspective on service and walk through our delivery and how we’re different from other cloud providers. We’ll also hear from <customer> who will share how FireHost’s service levels helped them.
- Neil: Thomas, I’ll turn the discussion over to you. There’s so much talk about the cloud today, yet somehow service doesn’t enter the conversation that often. Just what is the state of service in the industry? Thomas: Thanks, Neil. The truth is that the cloud has exploded so fast that most of the discussions have been about technical components. People want to talk about security, performance, cost. There just haven’t been many discussions on service - and it’s important. Until recently, the cloud has followed mostly a DIY model. Customers were on their own for the most part. Yet as more customers have joined, they’re demanding higher levels of service – it’s been a game changer for the industry. What’s the go-to standard been? Automation. And don’t get me wrong, automation is great to an extent - but customers can sometimes get themselves into trouble with too much automation. And that’s because you also need hands-on expert service. A human touch that’s reactive, nuanced and strategic. So what the industry needs is to find the right balance - automate to a certain point, then layer service on top. Finally, I’d like to talk about the difference in service offered by generalist providers and specialist providers. For generalists, security is not their primary focus and they offer a more basic service model. There’s more churn with generalists, more of a vendor/customer relationship, so they don’t offer the in-depth service that a specialist does. You can see this in SLAs; specialists tend to have longer relationships with customers that are more like partnerships, so they’re committed to their clients’ success and offer greater depth and breadth of service.
- Neil: Thanks, Thomas. We know that clients need the most secure cloud service available – a quality infrastructure that protects sensitive data and brand reputations, with the service to manage it. Can you explain the FireHost perspective on this? Thomas: Sure. As everyone knows, FireHost is all about security. This is why we place a high premium on service – because managed cloud service is critical to security. That includes technical expertise – our team offers the best security and compliance expertise around. We answer all of your technical questions and mentor your team when needed to ensure the smoothest handoff possible. We don’t move our clients through a revolving door; we work closely with them on every facet of their cloud environment and are committed to seeing their infrastructure succeed. Unlike many providers, we practice complete transparency. As a specialist provider, we can be open with customers – we have nothing to hide. We offer online access to our SLA and practice open door communication; you can always get someone on the phone quickly with FireHost. We also provide regular reports and performance reviews with TAM (technical account manager) at no extra charge. We have a global dashboard for server management, real-time reporting on blocked attacks, environment monitoring and granular resource utilization dashboards. This way everyone stays aligned and on track, and aware of where we’re going and what we’re dealing with. If issues come up, you’re never on your own. We respond quickly and do root cause analysis (RCA) to solve issues and see it all the way through. We can do all of this because we’re unique in offering a complete service package. Our team has military, startup and corporate expertise – there’s no situation we don’t understand, no environment we can’t protect. From our certified engineers to our staff compliance analysts and accredited security operations center, we know where your risk is and how to manage it. And as the Voice of the Customer, we work with you to understand your needs and requirements so that we always meet your best expectations.
- Neil: Now that we’ve walked through FireHost’s service approach, let’s look at a few specific traits that make us different from other industry providers. Thomas, what can you tell us about what makes FireHost unique?
- All providers will tell you they will show you their architecture or meet with you on a regular basis. FH, however: Invites discussions about security. Companies that include their CISO in the contract negotiation are the types of customers we want to work with. Shows they are serious about security No 90 day clause to have auditors to come on site We want security questions head on Communication breeds trust which breeds longevity
- Neil: Thanks, Thomas. That was a great overview of the FireHost approach to service. Obviously we take a very unique view of the service customers deserve in the cloud – how do those differences play out in our service delivery? Thomas: Neil, I could talk about that all day. The short version is that we offer managed service for virtually every aspect of the cloud experience. But I’ll provide some details on how that looks day-to-day, since I know our listeners are probably curious. Let’s start with onboarding. Those first 30-60-90 days could easily be considered the most critical stage of the customer-provider relationship. If things get off to a difficult start, if the provider doesn’t do their homework, it’s going to be very hard to recover from that. So we work closely with new customers to assist in configuring, migrating and tuning new customer environments. Whether the migration is from an internal infrastructure or from a competitor cloud environment, we ensure a smooth transition. And we don’t pull a disappearing act once everything is launched. We stay attentive in every way necessary. You’ll get regular ops reviews and reports, recommendations to improve service levels and operational efficiencies and advanced trouble-shooting. We’ll serve as your IT advisor and answer all your technical questions. We also work closely with your senior leadership to define and follow your IT roadmap and we even attend regular meetings in your organization to architect solutions. Like we said earlier, this is a Voice of the Customer approach. We don’t simply connect you with our tools and consider it a done deal. We make sure we understand your business and technical situations, that our strategy fits your agenda.
- Thomas: Sure, let’s run through a few. Probably one of the most obvious is our SLA, which you can see right on our website. Look closely and you’ll see many other providers have SLAs that focus on response time - not resolution time. Our SLA is different. We don’t just commit to responding to a call or a ticket in 15 minutes. We commit to getting engaged in the issue and resolving it as quickly as possible.
- Speaking of response times, we achieve Five 9s. This means that your infrastructure works 99.999% of the time. Many providers are at only 99% or 3 9’s. Why is this important? Because just one nine can make a drastic difference in the amount of downtime you experience in a year. We guarantee that we will restore or repair within 60 minutes of problem identification.
- Now let’s talk about our safe neighborhood environment – our way of keeping you safe before we even know who you are. How does this work? FireHost creates a “safe neighborhood” to minimize risk. We know porn, gambling and multi-player gaming sites sites attract malicious actors in high numbers – and of course, a law enforcement investigation can disrupt a cloud environment. Why would we jeopardize our good customers by putting them next door? So we assess all prospects before they become actual customers – and we don’t host shady sites.
- Now let’s return to onboarding services. As we mentioned earlier, we work closely with new customers to assist in configuring, migrating and tuning new customer environments to ensure a smooth transition - whether it’s from your internal infrastructure or your last provider. This includes identifying new efficiencies, performing application load testing, troubleshooting, and providing script automation tools to for faster and more accurate work. We also mentor your engineers to ultimately ensure a smooth handoff to service delivery and service management.
- Our security is also different, as you might expect with our risk management focus. Our security ops team integrates with your team and mitigates your risk by leveraging our expertise. Yes, that partly refers to the in-house experience we have with security and compliance – but it also refers to our way of sharing the security wealth, so to speak. In addition to analyzing and acting upon macro data in terms of threats, we use our experiences with each customer to learn new ways of protecting all of our customers.
- Finally, I want to mention our no-contract approach. That’s right – unlike other providers, you’re free to leave anytime. We don’t put you on lockdown for two reasons. One is that it’s our way of telling you we’re sincere, hard-working and accountable. You know right off the bat we’re going to be honest and true because hey, if we’re not, we’d lose your business. I actually dealt with a customer who found this approach very suspicious. He couldn’t believe we wouldn’t try to lock customers into a long-term contract advantageous to our own interests. I told him, “We want to earn your business every month. Our customers stay because they want to, not because they have to.” And that brings me to the second reason we don’t do long-term contracts – we don’t need to. We offer such a high level of security, service and performance that we feel confident our customers will want to stay.
- Neil: Now that we’ve taken a look at service in the cloud industry, let’s hear your questions. If you have any challenges that you’re facing, let us know and we’ll talk about the right actions to take. Just use the chat feature to submit your questions.
- Thank you for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed learning more about the service you should expect in the cloud and that we answered all of your questions. Within a day or so, you’ll receive a recording of this webinar in an email. To learn more, please visit us at firehost.com – and don’t forget to attend our next webinar on <xx> on <topic.> We look forward to seeing you again.