What has The Cloud done for you lately?

[Chadhardy]

*sorry for the corny title...

I have recently been making slow movements into MSP offerings, but the more I read it seems like a lot of the MSP people are moving into Cloud services now. So, instead of being 5 years behind everyone I'm thinking of jumping directly on the Cloud train. I already use (but haven't sold) Google Apps, plus I've been looking into Office 365.

So my question is where do you stand in regards to offering Cloud services? Have you already started doing this? If so, what services are you offering?

Also, what type of Cloud services are clients interested in? I'm sure backup is going to be the most asked for, but what else should I be educating myself on?

[4ycr]

I use a UK supplier for exchange and sharepoint.

Not looked at anything else yet.

[krtechsolutions]

I have been moving more and more of our clients to a Citrix based cloud server they go to a website and can run their application from any client or mobile device.

I rent space in a data center and run blade servers with a Nas

[npinc]

We do Office 365 (which is absolutely brilliant) and cloud backup primarily. They sell themselves.

[Chadhardy]

@krtechsolutions - One of the big issues I see people discussing is if you move people away from where they're dependent on local hardware and software you're basically working yourself out of a job. Besides charging to move their data to the cloud how else are you making money from those clients? Are they calling you as much as they were before moving to the cloud?

@npic - How are you making money from the Office365 installs? Charge to setup? Do you charge any type of maintenance or training fees?

[npinc]

We charge for the setup and training. I like your idea of maintenance. I'm going to investigate the possibilities there.

[YeOldeStonecat]

Originally Posted by Chadhardy

So, instead of being 5 years behind everyone I'm thinking of jumping directly on the Cloud train.

If you haven't started yet...you already are 5 years behind...

We do hosted terminal server, managed antivirus, WAN management, offsite backup of several different tiers, Office 365 resellers...as well as several other hosted Exchange packages, several different RackSpaceCloud products, and the list keeps growing.

[YeOldeStonecat]

Originally Posted by Chadhardy

@krtechsolutions - One of the big issues I see people discussing is if you move people away from where they're dependent on local hardware and software you're basically working yourself out of a job. Besides charging to move their data to the cloud how else are you making money from those clients? Are they calling you as much as they were before moving to the cloud?

@npic - How are you making money from the Office365 installs? Charge to setup? Do you charge any type of maintenance or training fees?

I used to be of that frame of mind.
Sure...in the old days, I'd have a nice project..new client, brand new Small Business Server ..make money on selling that 7 or 8 thousand dollar server. And then make 5 or 7 grand in setup fees. Yeah....one of those per month made for a fat and happy payday.

But the economy changed, clients are holding onto their hardware, not spending as freely. And I learned about residual monthly income of reselling cloud services.

One of our biggest nice monthly incomes has become reselling DattoBackup. A super high end disaster recovery and backup product that includes offsite backup. So..yeah..happens to be a "cloud" product...if we insist on using that over-used marketing buzz work.

Pssst..."the cloud" has been around for a long long time..think about POP3 e-mail (from your old ISP)..or even AOHell....I mean....AOL.

But back to the topic...reselling cloud based products result in monthly income...nice and steady. And it's often a service that requires very little work on our end...so it's easy gravy each month.

Yeah, gone are the days of doing fat rich server deals and making tons of setup money. But we can replace that with lots of smaller regular monthly services that require little work..and they all add up to a pretty good sum.

Like Clint Eastwood said..."Adapt and Overcome!"

[Chadhardy]

@YeOldeStonecat - I've been selling (reselling) cloud products for awhile (web hosting, Carbonite, custom programmed apps, etc.) but I'm starting to see more HaaS and DaaS talk on industry websites. I was wondering what else it out there to expand into beyond backup, Office365, Google Apps, etc.

How do you make money on O365? Just setup and data transfer? As far as I'm aware we can't sell the service to a client can we?

I just read this article from May 2012...

"I was recently at a conference for technology solution providers, put on by an industry association. There I was sitting at a roundtable near the front. To my left and right were executives of managed service providers (MSPs), internet service providers (ISPs) and others, but the real action was directly across the table, frothing at the mouth. It wasn’t a rabid dog, it wasn’t a sports fanatic describing a huge loss — it was a Microsoft sales rep.

After listening to the backlash from the executives, the rep finally reached his boiling point, when the question was asked, “When are we going to be able to start billing our clients directly for Office 365?” His eyes glared back at us, his face turned red in anger, and with a firm voice, he blurted, “never, it will never happen.” Emphasis on the never was hard to mistake."

http://www.wired.com/cloudline/2012/...oft-resellers/

How is everyone making money with Google Apps and/or Office365?