[There's a reason that Yoda is the unofficial mascot of SBS. Size indeed matters not.] So what do your clients really think about this cloud stuff? - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA
Sun, Jul 22 2012 23:31 bradley

So what do your clients really think about this cloud stuff?

Planted Agastache Blue Fortune - as you can tell I'm trying to get more butterflies, bees and hummingbirds in the garden.

So something to stick in the back of your head and food for thought.  Do you know what your clients really think about all this cloud stuff?  The cloud marketing is doing a job on folks so that you think you should want to put stuff in the cloud even if you don't know exactly what it is. 

I keep feeling like there's a problem in the data that keeps getting thrown around.  Some vendors make statements like 90% of the customers have adequate bandwidth to support cloud deployments.  And then I look around and people say their clients don't have bandwidth.

It's getting to the point that I no longer trust any marketing blurb that cites surveys and statistics as invaribly when you peel back the raw numbers and look at the rounding errors of the study, some of them have huge errors of margin. 

Are we reacting to this change because it's really bad for our clients or bad for being a consultant?

Honestly it's probably a little bit of both isn't it?

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# re: So what do your clients really think about this cloud stuff?

Monday, July 23, 2012 7:58 AM by SeanPT

When I have "the talk" with clients I try very hard to stay neutral. So when they say "Tell me about the cloud" I don't say "The cloud is great!" nor do I say "The cloud isn't what it is cracked up to be." I know that as a consultant I set the tone so I could very well be a cheerleader but because every client comes to the same conclusion, I feel like that would make me look silly.

So after I give a very neutral, fact filled talk and I get to the Q&A there is always some form of:

"So for everything I want to do I have to pay per user per month from now until the end of time and if our internet connection goes down we are unable to do anything. I don't want that - why would I want that?"

So then we do more Q&As and I explain all the good things and the bad things (again, this is what we all should be doing, the whole truth) and they still come back to per user per month from now until the end of time (and contracts).

# re: So what do your clients really think about this cloud stuff?

Monday, July 23, 2012 8:08 AM by Pete Perry

When I’m called in to present a server solution to a potential customer, I’m asked over and over, “What’s the cloud I hear some much about?  Is this something I’m supposed to be doing?”  This is where cloud marketing is going a good job because the mindset is making business owners think they’re “supposed” to use the cloud, and if you don’t you’re substandard and you have an incompetent IT solution provider otherwise for not encouraging it.  Every single potential and current business owner I’ve encountered doesn’t even understand what the cloud is.  In enlightening the customer I simply ask the customer, where do you want you data?  On the premises of off the premises?  Honestly, it is truly that simple, right?  Let’s put it this way (and I’ve posted this on the SBS Blog site) I have yet to implement a single Windows SBS Essentials sever.  

If a business owner chooses an all on-premises solution, they nor their IT solution provider shouldn’t be demonized for it.  This demonization is becoming the status quo now as well.

# re: So what do your clients really think about this cloud stuff?

Monday, July 23, 2012 7:58 PM by GavinS

I'd say it is the opposite way round. Around 90% of my clients don't have the bandwidth available for cloud (this is in the UK). As Pete mentioned above, our company has not sold one single SBS Essentials Server. I've encountered pretty much exactly the same as above. All the clients ask about it, but when you tell them the data is kept off site, if their internet goes down they no longer have access and they have to pay monthly, that is enough to put them off.

My company is going to have a hell of a job selling a cloud solution to our existing clients who are used to shelling x amount on a server and that being it.

Love your blog Susan, but the captcha is permanently broken in Chrome!

# My clients aren't like yours

Tuesday, July 24, 2012 12:26 AM by Joe Raby

I've sold several SBS Essentials servers because the client needed access permissions set on folders, so AD was the easiest way to do that, and the reason why Storage Server wasn't adequete.  They also had a few SQL databases for some LOB apps.  Only a few were looking at SBS Standard already, but the ones that thought that security would be the one reason why SBS Standard would be a valid choice also said that if something had to be sent "securely", email wasn't the way to do it because the added cost and complexity of encryption and digital certificates just didn't fit their budget (or they didn't know that those were even options), and so they continue to do what they always have with secure document transmission: they fax it.  Those customers eventually just went with another NAS-like OS like SBSe.

Most of my customers that want local storage still use POP email accounts too because they don't really care about Exchange.  They don't want hosted Exchange because a lot use Outlook BCM, and local Exchange doesn't fit into a smaller budget anymore for the few features that interest them (budgeting is always a compromise).  The ones that really want Exchange ARE looking at Office 365 already, and most of those don't have a server already and are relatively new businesses.

The ones that are interested in OpEx spending?  Young entrepreneurs that are building a new startup.

Oh and those that went hybrid SBSe + Office 365 so far?  Absolutely none!