SADA Systems Inc., the managed service provider that jettisoned its Microsoft business to go all-in on Google Cloud Platform earlier this year, this week launched flat-rate packages to give enterprises pricing certainty and dedicated timelines.

SADA Systems’ Miles Ward

Unforeseen costs and project obstacles stand out as two big issues when migrating workloads to the cloud. SADA sought to “eliminate the mystery,” CTO Miles Ward told Channel Futures, and help more organizations take advantage of the benefits cloud offers – reliability, ease of use, performance, availability and so on.

“I think the impediment to adoption has been this specter of risk associated with those deployments,” Ward said. “Our focus is on trying to make those first steps simple.”

To that end, the first two packages are Google Anthos-centric. Anthos allows users to build and manage modern hybrid applications on existing on-premises investments or in the public cloud.

The “First Step” service provides a 90-day trial, which Google must approve, complete with hardware, software, installation, configuration and employee training. Anthos Flat Rate serves as the second phase of the Anthos implementation and comes with more support and integration.

Database Migration Flat-Rate provides services that move database infrastructure onto Google Cloud Platform. And, finally, VM Migration Flat-Rate sets up users’ virtual machines in Google Cloud.

Each service comes with the choice of small, medium or large packages, and SADA identifies out-of-scope tasks for each that will add expense should enterprises require extra work. Otherwise, organizations can count on fixed pricing and deadlines, something relatively unheard of in the cloud world.

Indeed, one of the pitfalls of cloud always has been its unpredictable cost due to fluctuations in usage and consumption. When the cloud craze started, vendors touted the shift from capex to opex budgets as promise of lower expense. That remains true up to a certain point, the point where licenses, storage, maintenance, consumption, usage spikes and more all add up to higher financial outlay than expected or desired. IT and purchasing experts can have a difficult time forecasting and planning for costs, which causes organization-wide heartburn.

SADA aims to fix that.

The fixed-rate packages, Ward said, “are designed to help someone working with the purchasing department know how much it will cost and how long it will take. They have those answers up front.”

Constellation Research’s Holger Mueller

Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst for Constellation Research, told SiliconANGLE that SADA’s packages could offer the certainty many businesses need when it comes to cloud. But, he told the publication, “executives will need look at the fine print of this offer and ensure they end up with an outcome in line with their enterprises’ expectations.”

SADA is aware of that caveat.

“We know what we’re getting into. We’ve seen this a few times,” Ward said. “SADA has done enough implementations and practiced enough that we can now be confident in establishing a fixed price point and a fixed timeline. This is a giant step forward for most of the buyers used to open-ended discovery.”

The four buckets unveiled this week represent…

…just the beginning of SADA’s venture into flat-rate pricing.

“We’ll come up with more packages over time and convert these problems to solutions,” Ward said.

SADA is not revealing pricing to anyone other than its sales teams. The company wants to keep its competitive advantage close to the vest for now.

Avant Communications’ Ian Kieninger

SADA distributes through Avant Communications and Intelisys. Avant teamed up with SADA in June to bring Google Cloud Platform to its enterprise clients. Ian Kieninger, CEO of Avant, told Channel Futures his company is excited to offer SADA’s new services through its partners.

“These new SADA Flat-Rate Packages for Google Cloud Platform are remarkable offerings for the industry, as they allow our trusted advisers to onboard enterprise customers with more certainty around timelines and predictability around costs, something every customer struggles with when embracing cloud technology,” Kieninger said.

Intelisys did not respond to Channel Futures’ request for comment about the new fixed-rate packages.