Nothing succeeds like success, so each issue of CloudStrategies News will feature an informative case study detailing how different businesses have found higher service levels at lower cost by transitioning some of their IT implementation to the cloud with a customer we have helped.
Centerline
Partners is a management consulting firm focused on Requirements
Management. They combine industry best practices, proven
methodologies, and experienced professionals to partner with their
clients to deliver tangible results in the form of reduced costs,
increased revenues, expanded market share, and sustainable
growth.
As their team grew to more than 30 members, Partner and Co-Founder Andy Simon recognized the need to evolve their email infrastructure. They had followed the path of most new companies, starting with readily available POP3 (Post-Office-Protocol) mail and migrating to IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) at their ISP (Internet Service Provider). Now, however, he wanted to provide his people with shared calendars, shared contacts, and the other benefits of a truly robust email platform.
"In-house was never an option," explains Simon describing his decision to evaluate hosted solutions. "We looked at Google Mail, Google Apps, and perhaps hosted Microsoft Exchange from an ISP.
A trusted friend suggested to Andy that he contact Microsoft about their Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS) assuring him it was both "ready for primetime" and focused on growing companies of his size.
"Microsoft was very compelling about BPOS and their interest in our size company," notes Simon, who was already familiar with the features and benefits of Microsoft Exchange. "Google Apps had failed some of our tests, and Microsoft convinced me we'd enjoy REAL support, even having a dedicated number to call that would answer immediately and not keep us on endless hold when trying to solve a problem."
Andy Simon
Partner/Co-Founder
Centerline Partners
Microsoft recommended that Andy contact
CloudStrategies for assistance in configuring and
migrating to BPOS.
Andy Simon was impressed. "The fact that the team at CloudStrategies was ex-Microsoft and understood the inner workings of Microsoft made them more appealing. With their depth of knowledge, I felt as though I was speaking directly to Microsoft when I spoke with them."
Since his team had performed their own migration from POP3 to IMAP, Andy Simon assumed they would also migrate to Exchange on BPOS. "The CloudStrategies guys said they'd do it for us!" says Simon. CloudStrategies president Pete Zarras acknowledged that his team had never done a transition from IMAP at a small ISP to BPOS, but assured Andy Simon that his team
would provide him with a quality transition at an excellent
rate. "They were fantastic," exclaims Simon. "They were honest with
us that this cutover was new to them and that they would be
fine-tuning along the way. While there were a few normal bumps
along the way, we knew that going in and they were perfect!"
Next, Andy Simon and team are exploring Office Communicator and thinking about how to apply SharePoint to give clients access to certain document repositories. "Our consultants are on customer premises billing in 11 states, and on the customer's network too. BPOS and Exchange work well for us because we're able to get to our servers through their firewalls and proxies in total compliance with their security. SharePoint will give our people and our clients similar properly authenticated secure access."
Andy Simon praises CloudStrategies for the work
they did for him. "I highly recommend them. There's no downside.
We're a growing company, fairly new, and our model is based on
honesty and integrity. So is theirs."
"CloudStrategies is a trustworthy Microsoft
partner who is well-versed in the BPOS suite and more than capable
of handholding, provisioning, and managing the entire process.
They're patient and customer-oriented. They never said "no" and
figured out a way to get everything done. I don't measure a company
when things are going well, I measure them by how they perform when
there are problems. CloudStrategies resolved every
challenge professionally, quickly and to my satisfaction!"