MSPs: Help Clients Decide what to Move to the Cloud

So, you have worked hard to convince a client that your cloud-based file sharing is something they cannot do without and you finally have their attention. How will your client go about deciding what they should put up on the cloud and what they can leave on their in-house servers? Yes, most managed service providers (MSPs) like to leave this decision to their clients. Yet, if you took the trouble in helping them decide what to move, it would definitely help you score some brownie-points with them – not to mention, ease the transfer process and help you get started.

Help your clients understand all the sides of the cloud

Helping your clients to thoroughly understand the cloud means giving them a heads-up on what downsides can be expected (subtly, of course). As hard as this is, remember securing a client’s patronage is pointless if they discover a weakness later on. Not only will this mean that they will leave you, but you can also expect negative PR as a result. For instance, regardless of how secured your data centers and IT infrastructure is, the possibility of some downtime is always present. This can not only happen because of an outage at your end, but also your client’s end.

Creating redundancies such as backing up data periodically is a good solution to such inevitabilities. These may not always be enough either; you can use isolated multiple data centers located at different geographical locations to fall back on in case of an outage.

Fill them in on the usual type of data companies move to the cloud

Usually, companies do not like to move mission-critical applications to the cloud straight away. Moving data to the cloud can be taxing if the data or application being moved is complex or big. If this is the case, then you can help them out with less critical applications.

Your prospects can test the waters by using it as an off-site backup solution, or by sending less critical apps up there. Some of the most regular forms of data moved to the cloud include email, file sharing, instant messaging, active directories, web-servers, and disaster recovery.

Tackling those mission-critical applications

Any MSP will want to beat their competition to securing that big data project; however, doing so is not easy. If a company has declared an application as mission-critical, then outages are almost always out of the picture. Fortunately, companies are warming up to the idea of using the cloud to house sensitive applications and data.

You can start by evaluating how much downtime important tier-one applications can tolerate. Some apps require 100 percent uptime, while others can do with a few hours of downtime per year – especially if you’re willing to work a weekend/holiday in order to get this done.

You should also help your client ascertain the cost of a downtime. This is not restricted to the cloud; any enterprise should perform such an audit against even their onsite infrastructure. The cost of downtime can be measured in dollars or even reputation damages. This allows the prospect to gauge just how much availability they require in order to keep their core services running.

Moving legacy apps to the cloud is just the first step. What’s more important is getting them to work with your infrastructure and the resources present therein. However, new technologies are emerging which help to bridge the gap between traditional applications and cloud-based infrastructure.