Posted by Steve Schwartz on Tue, Jun 22, 2010
Here are a few recent updates on implement.com and our work as a partner with Microsoft.
implement.com attends 2010 EMEA Hosting Club
We recently attended a gathering of executives from the top hosting companies in Europe called the EMEA Hosting Club. It was held in Vienna and focused on sharing best practices amongst the various companies in attendance in a roundtable format. We also took the opportunity to meet with some of our key European clients and work out plans for deploying Exchange 2010 SP1.
implement.com profiled in 2010 EMEA Partner Guide
We have been profiled in a Microsoft publication that highlights sgnificant partners in Microsoft's EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, and Africa). This is a great opportunity for us to relay our value proposition to a wide audience. Here is a link to the guide:
Microsoft Communications Sector Partner Guide EMEA 2010
implement.com guest blogs on Microsoft Communications Sector Hosting Insights Blog
We were invited to provide a guest blog on the Microsoft Communications Sector Hosting Insights Blog about the work we are doing with Microsoft on how to migrate to their forthcoming Exchange 2010 SP1 release. This is the first version of Exchange that will be officially supported by the product group for multi-tenant hosting. You can read the details on the blog, but I will say that this was a great opportunity to showcase our thought leader ship in the Hosted Exchange ecosystem and our role over the last 11 years as a partner of Microsoft and its customers for deploying the Microsoft hosting platform.
Guest Blog by implement.com: Native Multi-Tenancy Provisioning in Hosted Exchange 2010 SP1
Posted by Steve Schwartz on Mon, Apr 26, 2010
We are pleased to announce that implement.com has been invited to present at the 2010 Microsoft Hosting Summit. Our presentation is on Hosted Unified Communications and Unified Messaging, and how to go to market with Hosted Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS) and Microsoft Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging. Our presentation is part of the invite only portion of the conference for Microsoft's most successful hosting partners.
This is a nice acknowledgment of our thought leadership in the Hosted Unified Communications industry in general, and of our deep expertise with Hosted OCS 2007 specifically.
We are uniquely qualified to deliver this presentation for a couple of reasons:
First, we have been focused on how to deliver hosted Microsoft Exchange and Office Communications Server for as long as these products and markets have existed, Exchange since about 1999, and OCS (with it's first iteration as Live Communications Server) since 2006. In the nascent world of cloud computing, that makes us pioneers.
Second, we actually deliver the service! When we started our hosting operation in 2006, Chinook Hosting, we intentionally started it to deliver Hosted Unified Communications, including Hosted Unified Messaging. We were a little early. However, that early entry allowed us to amass key experience on how to deliver Hosted Unified Communications. It wasn't easy, but it paid off for us when we launched at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2008 the very first Hosted Unified Messaging offering based on Microsoft Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging.
This was truly ahead of it's time, but as cloud computing emerges in 2010, hosted communications services will be one of the key areas of focus for the successful service provider.
implement.com is already acknowledged and continuing to move forward as one of the thought leaders for the Microsoft hosted solutions ecosystem and this presentation is a validation point that makes us think we are on the right track in Hosted Unified Communications.
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.