Hosting Hurdles
The IT Manager was really frustrated. The organization was growing at a rapid pace, but there was constant friction with the “consulting” firm that hosted e-mail and provided infrastructure support.
The customer found us on the web and verified with Microsoft that Matrixforce was a top 25 national Cloud Accelerate Partner. We simply listened as he recounted his issues with the current hosting and support:
- The consulting firm owner had so much litigation in the industry that he had become an attorney with extra attitude.
- Before the IT Manager position was created, the consulting firm actually finagled leasing the firewall, network attached storage, and fax services – effectively capturing the customer.
- The consulting firm owner also routinely told the IT Manager that if they didn’t like the service to move on to someone else.
- The admin portal was often inaccessible or broken meaning he really had no control.
- In fact there was no documentation on anything and any questions were simply rebuffed or ignored.
- There was just one guy for the customer’s account who was constantly busy, difficult to contact, and slow to respond.
- Even the simplest of things had to be arranged for on-site support so the tech could bill the maximum amount by the hour.
- The IT Manager had discovered that his e-mail was actually hosted by a third-party located in Missouri on the New Madrid fault line.
- The consulting firm had recently purchased a wildcard SSL certificate in their name and the Exchange Connectivity Test would not verify for the customer’s domain.
- If the IT manager wanted his data back, he was at the mercy of the consulting firm to export mailboxes to an external drive which was in vogue 10 years ago.
The customer was amazed when we explained managed services were actually flat cost and that cloud computing was not hosting. We provided:
- A nominal flat cost project to migrate mailboxes automatically.
- Flat cost Guardian Managed Services for infrastructure support.
- Test migration to prove that the data was accessible and the IT Manager could review his own migrated mailbox.
- System Plan with Office 365 settings and on-premise infrastructure configuration.
The IT Manager got a raise because the mailboxes were seamlessly migrated over a weekend and the improved reliability and disaster recovery. The network was more stable and the support was less. Most importantly, the customer’s management were excited they had a business partner with a full staff and a proven methodology to openly help business without motivation to just sell product and time.
