Six Considerations When Selecting a Partner-Friendly Cloud Service Provider: How to Compare Offerings Among Cloud Service Providers

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 4!CONSIDERATION 1: ACCESS METHODS AND CONTROL 4!CONSIDERATION 2: PERFORMANCE LEVELS 6!CONSIDERATION 3: SUPPORT AND TRAINING 8!CONSIDERATION 4: FLEXIBLE SERVER AND NETWORK CONFIGURATIONS 9!CONSIDERATION 5: PARTNER PROGRAM BUSINESS MODELS 10!CONSIDERATION 6: A CLOUD WITH NO LEARNING CURVE 11!CONCLUSION 12!

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The MSP/VAR business has been changing rapidly in the last few years - and in 2015, these changes have accelerated. Cloud-based technologies, and the emerging new vendors and business strategies designed to handle them, are threatening traditional revenue streams and customer relationships throughout the MSP and VAR community. MSPs and VARs are also struggling to build a framework around the best way to address the cloud. Whether it’s meeting customer requests to reduce CAPEX, or to simply figure out a profitable way to monetize the cloud and avoid unnecessary risks and unknowns, it’s important to learn what to look for. It is possible to profit from cloud infrastructure and turn this latest technology shift into a major selling point. But you need a reliable partner provider that understands the channel. In fact, many MSPs that were early movers are seeing margins that are higher on cloud servers, and cloud storage than they had with the hardware they sold for on-site use. While mark-up on hardware and billable hours for the install are no longer viable, a continuous revenue stream of 20 to 40% monthly can really add to the bottom line. MSPs are also seeing far lower costs in managing cloud-based infrastructure, where the hardware replacements and general management of the hardware are the responsibility of the Cloud provider. Your company needs an authentic partner that can work with your team on a personalized level, a team that provides genuine solutions and takes your success as seriously as you do. Therefore, selecting the right cloud partner is critical. How do you choose them and what is involved? How do you measure your ROI?

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INTRODUCTION Cloud migrations can go one of two ways: either painless and on time/budget, or … not. Much has been published on this subject, but one of the key factors that will drive success for cloud migrations for an MSP is their choice of Cloud provider.

The reputation of your company is reliant on a positive customer experience and a smooth cloud transition. This will go a long way in establishing you as a customer-friendly, knowledgeable provider for this new technology deployment option. Not only does your reputation depend on it, so too will a long term business partnership.

This white paper will assist you in answering these questions, by providing six important aspects of how to choose your cloud partner with individual questions you should ask potential partners.

CONSIDERATION 1: ACCESS METHODS AND CONTROL One of the issues IT teams have with the cloud is the perceived lack of control over and access to their physical servers. Small data centers don’t offer any of the modern multiply-redundant N+1 or N+2 fire, power, connectivity, modern physical security and theft prevention features that cloud providers take advantage of. Not to mention trying to order new servers to scale up infrastructure for anxious owners and businesses in need of more CPU cores or replacement parts for failed hardware. Today your client’s server, storage and networking infrastructures are most likely in a server closet, data center or co-location facility, and it is a walk or drive over for your team to manage them. When purchasing new or upgrading existing infrastructure, you probably use a whiteboard to determine what architecture and configurations your client needs and how they will integrate with the networks. You then order the hardware and racks, stacks and network and only then install your image.

By 2018, it’s estimated that the cloud will be worth as much as $127 billion, counting “only” core cloud services such as SaaS, PaaS and IaaS.

According to the “RightScale 2015 State of the Cloud Report”, 57% of SMBs surveyed have not yet moved to the cloud - but are working out how to get there.

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Some cloud service providers include visual tools to help you design, configure and manage one or multiple cloud data centers. With tools like this your technicians will benefit from a full overview and complete access to every CPU and GB of RAM they have deployed and they can scale the server capacity or provision a server via the tool, all while the server is live in production.

Figure 1: The Data Center Designer, a Graphical User Interface for Managing Cloud Data Centers Some cloud service providers make it easy to assign access levels to specific clients and machines by employee, customer data center or even device level. Remember, with IaaS your customers only pay for infrastructure that is running. Some second-generation cloud providers can meter by the minute, so an even greater potential for higher margins is available. Also, some cloud providers can “feel” like a real tier of hardware, sitting in your closet; but with IaaS you’ll benefit from the control and flexibility you’d expect from an in-house setup. Transitioning existing applications to the cloud is effortless. Whether simply transferring applications to a new server or migrating everything over to servers you’ve prepared and provisioned yourself by creating a public customer cloud for your business, it’s completely painless. With customer dedicated CPU cores and RAM, your clients are guaranteed the server they pay for is the server they get - customized, powerful, and always available. ProfitBricks even includes access to the pre-boot BIOS for additional configuration options. Questions to ask your potential cloud partner:

• How do the provider’s Service Level Agreements and Terms & Conditions apply to your requirements?

• Can instances be started and stopped at will? • Does the provider support multi-user device level access controls? • Does the provider allow the customer to fully manage their cloud services and related

infrastructure?

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CONSIDERATION 2: PERFORMANCE LEVELS Regardless of their business segment, your clients require and need high-performance infrastructure. Recent reports have indicated that clients want speed, stability and high availability above everything else. Their productivity is at stake. As any user will attest, a real or perceived slowness and server unresponsiveness will decrease chances of success. It’s important to accurately assess a provider’s ability to meet your specifications and performance requirements. This is particularly important when you are advising clients in moving their infrastructure to the cloud. If the perception of performance is bad, you’ll start their cloud migration off poorly. Public Cloud computing providers offer technologies that your clients simply could not afford alone, such as networks based on InfiniBand network interconnects - offering connections of 80 Gbps vs. the standard Ethernet connections of 1Gbps or 10Gbps. Or enterprise grade RAID 10 storage configurations with automatic redundancy across multiple data centers. The ability to scale up and down by using additional CPU cores and RAM remains imperative. You’ll want to jump in and ask questions about a provider’s architecture as well as run and read performance reports. Don’t take everything for granted; many providers oversub-scribe their hardware and “share CPU cores and RAM” among other customers. Questions to ask your potential cloud partner:

• How does the provider bridge between multiple service environments within the same data center?

• Does the provider support fixed size virtual machine sizes or do they let you customize them?

• Does the provider support private network segments and subnets? • What connection speeds do they offer between servers and between servers and

storage? When choosing your cloud service provider to manage your IaaS cloud servers, storage, and networks, look for one who will support and exceed your high performance requirements every step of the way.

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Figure 2: Comparing Ethernet vs. InfiniBand Benefits ProfitBricks continuously tests and benchmarks its infrastructure against other providers, and publicly publishes the results. You can also run the same tests, as the reports contain the details of each test. Download our latest Synthetic and Workload reports now.

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CONSIDERATION 3: SUPPORT AND TRAINING Many cloud vendors are more than happy to sign your company up as a partner and start taking orders without providing support or training. This can lead to disastrous aftersales issues for clients, engineers and techs. Some cloud providers have recently moved to only offering fully supported and managed cloud packages, meaning the full control and overview of your cloud servers is now completely out of your hands. The resulting loss of service revenue for their partners is now a big issue. When selecting a public cloud provider, look for one with multiple tier support that includes experienced, in-house SysAdmins. One that will provide you with pre-sales support, training materials, sales decks and further marketing information to help your engineering and tech teams deliver exactly what your clients need and that will assist you in selling cloud services in an efficient manner. Questions to ask your potential cloud partner:

• Is it necessary to speak with a salesperson prior to establishing services? • Does the provider have a migration scheme or provide assistance with migrations? • Is the salesperson responsive to requirements and do they offer specific

suggestions to meet your needs? • Do they offer marketing materials for partners?

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CONSIDERATION 4: FLEXIBLE SERVER AND NETWORK CONFIGURATIONS Almost all cloud service providers offer server sizes or configurations that have pre-set amounts of CPU, storage and RAM, forcing you to estimate how much a particular client or business will need, and make the purchase accordingly. Sometimes this works in their favor, but usually your clients end up paying for more than they use. This makes it very difficult to settle on a pricing continuum for your company. Some cloud service providers completely unbundle the resources that make up a server (CPU Cores, RAM, Storage) and enable MSPs to configure each cloud server to be optimized for the specific workload. These cloud service providers often have simpler pricing models and are more transparent in how they offer their services. You will also want to inquire about how their system is architected. Do they share the CPU cores and RAM across customer or dedicate these resources to each server that a particular customer has purchased? Questions to ask your potential cloud partner:

• Can you bring your own images? • Does the provider use enterprise-grade high-speed disks/SSDs or are they using

customer-grade gear? • Can each server be configured differently? • Can complex network architectures be replicated including public and private

networks?

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CONSIDERATION 5: PARTNER PROGRAM BUSINESS MODELS You’re both investing significant time and resources as well as risking your reputation when you choose a cloud service provider – of which there are now many. Presumably, your goal is to be able to handle your client’s transition to the cloud and get that recurring cloud-based revenue stream up and running for your business as well. The fastest way to do this is to go with a reliable and partner focused reseller program. Table 1: ProfitBricks Advantages when compared to Amazon/Rackspace/Azure

Do They Offer: AWS Rackspace Azure ProfitBricks

25% MSP/VAR Commission - - - X

Customer control of their Cloud X - X X

25% Discounts for your MSP/VAR - - - X

Data Center Designer (Graphical User Interface for ease of use) - - - X

Competes with you for your Client’s business X X X -

As you can see in the chart – each company is different in how they approach the channel. When you research the providers you’ll find commissions and discounts that vary greatly or fall off quickly. Or the provider will have minimum sales commitments. Some cloud service providers are now competing with their MSP customers by offering server management, backup features and other services that compete directly with the value added services that many MSPs offer. Questions to ask your potential cloud partner:

• Do you receive co-marketing support? • Do you receive advanced pre-sales support? • Do you receive a graphical user interface as part of the cloud implementation

solution, which may make it less costly for your team to support your customers? • What sort of commission or discount percentage do you receive, and does it fit

your business model?

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CONSIDERATION 6: A CLOUD WITH NO LEARNING CURVE Your team of SysAdmins, Database Engineers, Network Administrators and operations professionals have dozens of years of experience in total, and for many when they looked at the offerings of the early public cloud providers they saw a very different environment. Some cloud providers are built to serve developers and their requirements are centered around APIs and tools that enable cloud-native applications to run and scale. Other cloud providers offer a more balanced architecture that enables both new and existing applications to run and scale. Running existing applications can be challenging at providers that don’t offer virtual servers that behave like physical servers and networks that can’t be configured in the same way they were in an on-premise local data center. When you migrate applications to the cloud, you’ll want to leverage your existing team, their skills and their knowledge of the applications. Some cloud providers have architectures that require networking changes or storage location changes that existing applications don’t permit with adaptation. That can make your cloud migration take longer, cost or more even fail if not fully investigated. Questions to ask your potential cloud partner:

• Does the provider offer a GUI cloud data center management tool that is drag and drop or is it control panel/table based?

• Does the provider offer a full API with all required calls to configure, provision, scale and deactivate infrastructure?

• Does the provider operate a self-service model or do they require formal requests and tickets to complete tasks?

• Does the cloud provider make it possible to scale workloads both vertically and horizontally?

• Does the provider allow you to use your own images and ISOs?

“On the business-side it was simple. ProfitBricks “sticks to its knitting,” opting not to offer managed services as part of their product portfolio,” says Ed O’Connor, Vice President and CTO of Blue Lan Group.

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CONCLUSION Not all cloud service providers are created equal, and this also includes cloud computing partner programs. Whether it’s deficits in infrastructure, control or support, there will always be something missing if MSPs and VARs aren’t a valued focus. A company that doesn’t understand or work well with MSP or VARs could cause you to lose a great deal of income - if not your customers. ProfitBricks works together with you as a true partner; not as a competitor.

ProfitBricks is here to help you evaluate us as your cloud provider, from benchmark testing to pricing questions, our team of knowledgeable Cloud Computing Consultants and Sales Engineers are available by emailing inbound-us@profitbricks.com or calling 866-852-5229. ProfitBricks offers a 14-day, no obligation trial account that does not require a credit card for activation. Visit https://www.profitbricks.com/trial for in-stant access. Need a checklist for comparing Cloud Computing IaaS Providers? Download our white paper here.

Want to read our “Cloud Migration Steps” white paper? Download it here.

Would you like to see our publicly published Cloud Computing Performance Workload Benchmarks report? Download it here.

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www.profitbricks.com twitter.com/profitbricksusa blog.profitbricks.com This report was created by ProfitBricks – Version 1.1