Posted by Steve Schwartz on Tue, Mar 30, 2010
I have seen numerous times businesses try to compare hosted services to on premise based on a price or cost standpoint. In my viewpoint, the comparison must be done not on a dollar amount in a spreadsheet, but on the value of the service to the business. Whether it is on premise or hosted or in a cloud is more a business model discussion, though with lots of considerations such as security, service levels, and recoverability.
But how do you start to get a handle on the value of the service? I have attempted here to at least outline some of the items you might consider:
- Focus IT Staff on Mission Critical Line of Business Apps
- I have heard repeatedly from customers that their IT staff is overworked and understaffed and they wish they could focus on more mission critical line of business apps instead of things like managing Exchange.
- By outsourcing commodity technology like messaging and collaboration, unified communications, and business applications like CRM, you free up your IT staff, and further, future proof yourself from having to maintain current technology and keep your staff up to speed
- Get access to technology without roadblocks
- It is increasingly common to have a discussion with potential customers about them wanting to deploy a new technology like Unified Communications utilizing Microsoft Office Communications Server, but their IT staff is blocked by too many other projects and don't have the requisite expertise to deploy it quickly and start getting value. In some cases, this is from folks that have already bought the software and cannot leverage the investment.
- Physical Security
- This one is easy, how many small businesses have their Exchange or SharePoint server sitting under a desk, or in a non secure storage closet? Physically securing your server and storage is every bit as important as the standard security from user ids and passwords.
- Datacenter Features
- "The Cage"
- Having a highly efficient and secure "cage" in a data center is the first step in physical security and reliability
- Highly Available and Redundant Power and Network
- UPS and diesel generator backup power with multiple redundant communication links - how many small businesses have that?
- Security
- Multiple levels of physical access security and video surveillance, common in a Data Center, not so much in a typical office building
- Yeah, but I can get all of that by doing co-location myself can't I?...for 100 people?
- Sure you could, and for around $2-3,000 per month you get your cage, power, and broadband, but....
- You would underutilize the cage by an incredible margin - how many servers would you put in the cage? With blade technology you can place many servers in one cage but a typical small business probably only has a dozen servers at most
- For all of that expense for your servers, you are still woefully under utilizing them - to have minimally redundant Exchange platform, even with virtualization, you will need a few physical servers - but probably no Storage Are Network and related benefits - and for how many users? Maybe a 100 or 200? You will have a platform that could easily run 2000 users or more - hey, that's not green!
- End User and Customer Experience
- Easier, Web Based Administration and it can be delegated (IT staff establishes the rules, policies, and plans - then it's automated)
- More effective tools with tasks completed in a more timely manner
- Anywhere access without having to become an expert on firewalls and security
- In this article the Whir does a nice job of analyzing the benefits for SMB's utilizing hosted services:
Finally, this is all summed up by saying it is difficult to quantify costs of on premise vs. hosted, and there are numerous tangents of value that have to be evaluated and how the outcomes of one choice impact the bottom line for the business.
Posted by Jarmo Paukkunen on Thu, Dec 17, 2009
I will confess at the outset that I am a firm believer in life-long learning ... not just formal or professional education for job-related reasons, but also for continual personal growth. Piano lessons or cooking classes are valid ways to pursue that goal.
In the IT industry there are many views about the value of partner certifications like Microsoft or Cisco. Some pundits observe that certificates mean little without practical experience or "street smarts." I tend to agree with this view - it would be a stretch to send someone who takes a 3-week boot camp and earns the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer credential to design a Windows network for a multi-national company with 50,000 users!
Conversely though, highly experienced engineers tend to work on small subsets of product features that are most relevant to architecture and deployment. This is analogous to how the hundreds of millions of people who use Microsoft Office probably know and use only 5% of the capabilities of the software, although in the case of senior engineers this percentage is probably more like 50%. Certification exams push IT professionals out of their comfort zone by forcing them to learn all aspects of the product. So I would argue that the combination of formal learning and practical experience is the ideal scenario. And mind you, training is an ongoing process that typically requires re-certification every three years to match typical product cycles.
It is interesting that many people believe the fallacy that certification tests are easy, and someone who has used the product for years can just walk in and pass the exam. This is simply not true. Typically, an individual with a reasonable product background needs to invest 20-30 hours of time learning the material to pass a 90-minute test. So companies that employ certified professionals are really demonstrating in a very tangible way their willingness to invest in their people.
When I worked at Microsoft, an internal analysis found a strong positive correlation between employee certification status and customer satisfaction scores. This result was not just confined to Microsoft products, but included ITIL certification for operations and security credentials like CISSP.
So, I would conclude that training and certification is a smart investment for good business reasons.
Microsoft's Partner Program requires partners to earn ‘competencies' in particular technology and business areas. Each competency requires a combination of Microsoft Certified Professionals (MCPs) on staff, and relevant customer references. While no system is perfect, partner competencies provide a yardstick that shows a Gold Certified Partner has delivered verifiable business solutions to customers, and has invested in its workforce by attaining required technical certification status.
Here at Implement.com, we hold several Microsoft Partner competencies. We've most recently attained the Microsoft Business Solutions competency focusing on Dynamics CRM 4.0. Our company has a commitment to maintaining engineer certifications by assigning time for study, paying for testing, and programmatically tracking results to plan.