The Hidden Chasm - Pitfalls That Cloud Vendors Won't Tell You About
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Learn to separate cloud vendor buzz from practical features you're likely to use.
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The Hidden Chasm - Pitfalls That Cloud Vendors Won't Tell You About
- 1. THE HIDDEN CHASM Pitfalls That Cloud Vendors Won’t Tell You About Presented by Ben Yampolsky Tiffany Bloomer
- 2. Who We Are Tiffany Ben
- 3. “Cloud”
- 5. There are Challenges … ❖Changing Processes ❖Transforming Data ❖Porting Users
- 6. Reality?
- 7. Who Do You Trust?
- 8. Who Do You Trust?
- 10. Ask the Sales Rep to be Realistic … • What is the average migration cost? • How will I be able to export my data back? • What security measures are in place? • Who do you share my information with?
- 11. Trust
- 12. So, Who Can You Truly Rely On?
- 13. Telling Fact from Fiction
- 14. The Challenge with SaaS Vendors
- 15. Hybrid Model Splits CapEx & OpEx
- 16. Aventis Advanced IT Services
- 17. How Advanced IT Services Came To Be 1. Evaluated Real Cost 2. Ran Pilot Programs
- 18. Aventis Systems: Determined to be Unbiased ❖Multiple Offerings ❖Decoupled Services from Products ❖Real-World Trials to Find Best Approach
- 19. Takeaways: 1. Hybrid Approach 2. Unbiased Vendors
- 20. Contact Us www.AventisSystems.com Services@AventisSystems.com
Editor's Notes
- Thank you, Tiffany. Well, let’s be honest - cloud is a buzzword that everyone in IT has heard for years now. Once it hit mainstream, man did it get annoying for us IT folks …!
- It’s not to say there isn’t a lot of value in many of the offerings that have sprung up around IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, but buzz about how the grass is greener on the other side never mentions the challenges it takes to get there.
- Out of the 10 sales calls per week that I get for some new niche cloud solution, none talk about the challenge of changing processes, transforming data and porting users from our existing on-premise infrastructure. As long as we figure that out on our own, cloud paradise awaits.
- I’d like to inject a modicum of reality and set some expectations in today’s webinar so that IT professionals learn to navigate the pitfalls these cloud vendors leave out of their sales pitch.
- Tiffany - Absolutely! A good vendor will validate your trust over time. A bad vendor could make recovering from a disaster a nightmare. So, who do you trust? Ben - I’ll tell you … it’s not the vendor! Sales representatives for cloud companies are trained to say “it’s magic” and armed with a single answer about their company’s infrastructure: “ I don’t know how it works, but it’s built on best practices.”
- Cloud reps pitch low upfront costs as a reason to say yes now. The half-truth with cloud vendors is that migration cost is never taken into account.
- You’ll hear that cloud is all about enhancing “ease of use” for your IT department, or “access anywhere” for your users but does that mean your data is more secure?
- My advice to you is do not buy into the buzz and ask your sales rep to be realistic when presenting their services. Questions like “What is the average migration cost to your platform? How will I be able to export my data back if the trial does not work out? What security measures are in place and who do you share my information with?” should result in measured and reasonable responses, and not a lot of hand waving.
- As IT pros we should all be working on making our environments quicker to respond to our users’ needs, more secure to address ever-growing threats, and as stable and predictable as possible. Moving to the cloud means placing your trust in the vendor to improve all of those aspects.
- Tiffany Interjection Absolutely! So, when evaluating cloud solutions, which vendors can you truly rely on for unbiased solutions?
- Unless you have an unbiased expert in both approaches, SaaS and on-premise, who is not trying to sell you something, it is very difficult to truly tell fact from fiction. I recommend working with an infrastructure vendor that also offers PaaS or hosting which would lessen the incentive for them to pigeonhole you, the customer, into a particular product.
- Unfortunately, most SaaS vendors prefer you use their product online because it guarantees their per seat pricing structure, recurring revenue, and forces EULA compliance. This does not mean it is a fundamentally better approach for the end customer. Tiffany Interjection You mean like SalesForce or Quickbooks online?
- Exactly. Those vendors provide amazing value to small customers that do not have any IT infrastructure or staff, but as the headcount of a business grows, the OpEx will pay for that investment several times over. The cloud vendor will point to ROI studies that make them a hero, but industry experts have conclusively decided the hybrid model to be the best approach. Tiffany Interjection I assume this means you have some advice to offer on this hybrid approach?
- Indirectly. For instance, we have recently launched Aventis Advanced IT Services which is a portfolio of services designed with the SMB IT environment in mind. Until recently, Aventis Systems stayed within the hardware VAR arena. As the cloud buzz built over several years, we recognized how important it was for SMBs with or without cloud expertise on staff to work with an unbiased IT advisor.
- We carefully evaluated the real cost of many cloud PaaS providers and have run into instances where they use voodoo math for TCO to justify their savings claims. We ran pilot programs to offer beta customers IaaS options and began offering hosted solutions as well.
- In our case, because we sell the hardware to situate your on-premise environment or your off-premise virtual environment, we have no incentive to push the customer one way or the other. Our goal is to remain unbiased by the sheer definition of covering all bases. We have worked with thousands of customers to help them decide if they need a mixed environment to be successful or if the cloud option exclusively works for them. For some customers, due to compliance or security reasons, cloud is not an option, but there are other ways to trim their IT infrastructure costs. Since this type of consulting is what many of our customers are looking for, we have decoupled this and other services from selling products - allowing us to give unbiased advice and stay away from FUD tactics.
- Very informative! My takeaways on this topic are: Traditional on-premise environments may easily end up being cheaper than exclusive cloud-based solutions, but often, a hybrid approach is best. To truly find out about an idea solution, it helps if your vendor has no incentive to push you to cloud vs. an on-premise environment. Ben - You got it!
- Thank you, Ben! Aventis Systems is an industry leader in developing customized and comprehensive IT hardware, software, and services solutions. I invite you to take a closer look at our Advanced IT Services suite. Please visit us at AventisSystems.com for additional information.
- Thank you for tuning in!