By Michael Brown 1

Clients have high expectations of managed service providers (MSPs). Not only do they rely on you to migrate, store and protect their sensitive data in the cloud, but they also expect you to leverage, scale, and manage their cloud services and applications, including cloud-based file sharing.

But for the best cloud experience there must be a mutually balanced MSP-customer relationship. All too often companies are left out of both the adoption and management process, leaving all their data in the hands of an MSP and without any understanding of cloud infrastructure or inner-workings.

The following are a few ways that MSPs can teach customers to mitigate risk and capitalize on all that the cloud has to offer. MSPs can guide and provide solutions, and clients can be educated to be responsible for their data.  

Show clients how they can access their data

Many times, customers are taught how to prepare and import their customer data without knowing how to extract it again in a way that’s useful to them. Just because data is backed up doesn’t mean it can be exported again in a way that’s actionable and useful to them.

Write programs that replicate the data in separate database, both in house and in the cloud, and make sure these programs can reassemble the structure in the live system.

Data should be prioritized by importance, with the most important data capable of being converted and recovered in near real-time. Help your client customize programs that can extract all the data from a particular system using the API provided.

Teach scalability

The ability to scale infrastructure, services and applications at rapid rates is one of the biggest advantages of adopting the Cloud. That’s why it’s important to teach customers how to scale both forward and backwards if need be.

Whether you’ve adopted software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) or infrastructure as a service (IaaS), clients should have a sense of the scalability of cloud software.

Customers may be unaware of just how flexible the cloud can be, and that can lead to under utilization out of fear of not keeping up with growing numbers.

Have risk mitigation strategy

Although MSPs offer valuable advice and insights as to how to migrate to the cloud,  clients are the ones that run the risk of damage to their reputation if data is somehow compromised. That’s why it’s always good to have a back up plan.

Teach customers that the cloud is a business platform, not just a product

MSPs are like fitness trainers – they’re there to get you started, guide you, teach you, work with you, and support you.

Once you’ve migrated to the cloud, it’s an entirely new way of doing business.

You are the cloud expert. Your clients, however, are the experts of their own company. By introducing them to the possibilities of the Cloud, they can determine where to focus much of their energy and what can be useful.