What Does AI Mean for the Future of Marketing?
The next big leap for artificial intelligence has “been around the corner” for decades. It’s not that the technology hasn’t been advancing, it’s just that the more we learn the less we know about what to do to really raise the bar. We’ve been waiting for the AI equivalent of the transistor, but nothing seems to really nail it to bring us into the Star Trek utopia singularity we’ve been promised (or at least make our jobs that much easier).
While it’s too early to really determine whether using a light based system over a standard electrical one will be that change, it will do what most AI advances do and open new doors which push everything forward. From the preliminary results we’re talking about an order of magnitude or more of improvement, but will this scale with current AI is the question? I can’t claim to know enough to give an answer, but what I do know is that the prospect of more accessible AI opens the door to many life changing prospects from career and on.
AI being easily applicable in marketing would be game changing for the field. The old way of marketing has had a rougher year than most of us, pushing digital marketing to the front. Despite the chaos around the world, marketing is seeing an almost Renaissance level of change and revitalization. The core of classic marketing is being rebirthed into the current era. It’s not much of a silver lining, but I’d rather see the drop in the glass than say it’s dry.
How Will AI Change Marketing?
Marketing has largely moved from physical networking to digital marketing. Your business card is something nice to have, but not a necessity anymore either in many circles. Going to a conference can help you network and forge deals, but it’s not the penultimate solution it was previously sold as. (That isn’t to say the traditional methods are dead, they have become an element rather than a full solution). It’s cheap and easy to reach out to basically any market anywhere in the world with the globalization of the internet and the collapse in advertising costs.
You aren’t constrained to a single market or markets you can physically reach, you’re constrained to your solution solving a specific problem. A plumber in Denver isn’t going to fix anything in Florida, but that doesn’t mean that digital marketing isn’t essential. Even local businesses are found mostly through search results and digital ads.
The problem your solution answers is constrained by region, but your outreach isn’t. This is both a blessing and a curse. The extra reach is a byproduct of your effort, not really a cost when done right, but that just means there are that many extra results in each search. It’s cheaper than ever to market which means everyone is doing it, you have to learn to do it better.
The big problem is that we have so much more data than we have ways to make sense of it all. People have gotten used to more and more personal outreaches (while expecting fewer in person and phone outreaches), and expect things to be more and more tailored to them while wanting to volunteer less and less. You have to read between the lines, but you need to know which lines matter too. Knowing where to go next and how much to use for any part of a campaign just gets increasingly complicated with the plethora of variables to track. There are also things which are repetitive but painfully manual due to technical limits. These are the problems AI in marketing will (eventually) solve.
We won’t start at AI, but we’ll work there as the technology becomes financially feasible. Amazon, Microsoft, and others have each released machine learning and AI frameworks, but they can be cost prohibitive. Frameworks like Torch exist, but they require you to understand more than just the recipes. The big barriers to entry are the cost in terms of both skills and platforms in order to really get moving. You need the right people who can create, condense, coalesce, and coordinate every piece of relevant data into something which can be further processed into something meaningful. The Amazon of today for that level of AI and machine learning (ML) will be the one-person marketing hustler of tomorrow once we find the right catalyst.
Automating Data Science
Virtually no one in marketing or otherwise has a problem getting data, they have a problem in getting the right data. You can either build data as necessary which is time consuming and slow, or try to get a massive dump of data and cut it down. These processes can be combined in different ratios and different stages as the secret sauce of your marketing program, but it’s still the same two ideas at play.
When should you acquire bulk data and scale down, and when should you slowly build a list? Just how should you cut out unnecessary bits and just how should you add individual entries? There isn’t a universally correct answer, you have to have some kind of metric for each effect, a way to measure changes from your action(s), and the knowledge and wisdom to make it work.
Ideally, AI will eventually take this sort of task over. You guide it based on what your campaign aims to do, and you offload the pain to a machine which won’t make mistakes (unless misprogrammed to do so). The seeds of change already exist in various analytic systems and similar which help collate and break down data. When it gets economic to do so, we’ll see a huge jump in platforms working in machine learning and beyond in some form. This process will either target increasing efficiency, decreasing inefficiency, or a balance.
Campaign Personalization
Once we have a bunch of data, we need something to do with it. If a specific campaign hits on 75% of the metrics for a subset of an audience, but the average take from the same campaign is 50%, how do we only target the more profitable side with that piece? How do we know what kind of campaign to build and balance? Your data is working to help you identify how to bring in clients, how to keep them happy, and how to get them to your sales team to close the deal. It also helps you figure out how to retain who you’ve already pulled in (if you use it right).
All of these sorts of things exist, but they’re buried in the data and metrics. It’s beyond what the average person can make sense of all the time. You need to have a way to reduce the data to something a person can cognitively process, then find a way to make use of that data. If you find that you get a nice Pareto distribution of a specific group from your data, you can personalize campaigns for them.
That can be cost prohibitive now because by the time you run the numbers, the campaign is usually already dusty with more traditional methods and more diverse campaigns. AI will make crunching the numbers for that something far easier. What are the unifying factors between various groups and what divides them? You could make 10 variations of each section and a program could reassemble them easily, but then the content looks fake without multiple people to proof and test. AI will provide a way to accommodate these sorts of changes without having to reinvent the wheel at each step.
You have to keep track of which people are in which group, and which campaign hits which group or groups. Identities change and it’s easy to miss subtle changes in a person the traditional way. A machine doesn’t make mistakes, but you can and will. Most of these ideas exist in some consumable form, but they just aren’t as mature as they could be. As automation accelerates, we’ll see more and more personalization with a cut to budgets due to the extra efficiency.
Resource Utilization
Part of increasing efficiency and reducing inefficiency is getting the most out of your resource utilization. If you know what is important (and most important) for a campaign, it can be easy to refocus your resource utilization in a way that makes sense. You don’t put your best graphic designer on a low importance task if you can help it.
If you know what matters, you know what you can target. This doesn’t need to be some Orwellian level robot overlord, but you want to be able to more efficiently use your resources. Where are things falling through the cracks and what is missing its mark, without being creepy?
HR, managers, and various leads currently try to balance this role, but there is so much more to it which takes way more people than it feels it should to get an underwhelming level of efficiency (compared to what is possible). You need someone making sure things function correctly, but you also need management to translate tasks between one group to another, and you also need oversight that the process hits the requisite checkboxes.
The right analytics, metrics, data, and algorithm could make this process more efficient. We probably don’t want to take the humanity out of the process anytime soon (if ever), but a lot of wasted labor could be reduced so that people can accomplish more important tasks rather than communicating the same things differently a dozen times a day.
Technical Limitations
Whether or not light based TPUs will bring us to the singularity remains to be seen, but each development is a step towards a more automated future. As technology progresses and our interactions with it do too, we’ll continue to see more and more growth in the applications of advanced data science with marketing and everything. AI is arguably just advanced data science with the right math to make things work. It sounds simple, but it’s like saying marketing is just sending the right communication. The devil is in the details for each part of the process.
Technical limitations, including scale and cost are what really hold us back from further use of AI in marketing and beyond. As the technology matures more and more, we’ll see data science and ML take off. It’s begun in some places, but it’s a bit like the Dot Com era, a Wild West of technology complete with the digital snake oil salesmen. Some supposed AI is just a weak ML principle with lot of “if” statements to make it work. It’s a black box by necessity and by design.
As the veil is lifted and it becomes easier to more scientifically approach the application of ML and AI in marketing, we will see a shift at even the lowest level to more integrated data science. Moving the apex moves the base of what is acceptable. The bar will get higher and higher until we hit the true singularity for AI. Until then, we’ll see advanced data science grow and grow in application in modern marketing from big to small. As more and more data can be produced and processed, we’ll see more and more automation of actions on this data. The singularity is coming, but that doesn’t mean you can’t grow from it first.
Meet Dennis Ward of Code Red Networks!
Tell us a little about your MSP…
Code Red Networks is located in Plymouth, MI and was started in March of 2018.
How long have you been a member of The 20?
We have been a member since we opened Code Red Networks in 2018.
Why did your MSP originally look to partner with The 20?
I was tired of fixing tools and wanted to scale without building my own help desk.
Tell us about the biggest change in your business since joining The 20.
We are growing and have doubled every year.
What do you like most about being a member of The 20?
The 20 is willing to help you out in a drop of a hat. We are a one man shop and have to do everything. With that being said, when I run into a problem that I can’t fix, I lean on The 20 community to help.
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
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Scale
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Being afraid of bringing any type of client, no matter their size or complexity.
What are your biggest business challenges?
-Learning how to think outside of the box
-Looking at the bigger picture.
-Learning how to talk to bigger prospects.
What are your areas of focus for 2021?
-Moving all clients to the help desk
-Sale process
-Marketing funnel
– Scale
What advice would you share with an MSP looking to scale their business?
- When you are joining The 20, go all in.
- Open your mind to the bigger picture that Tim is laying out for us.
What book are you currently reading?
Scaling up
Favorite blogs / podcasts
Daren Hardy
Interested in becoming a member like Code Red Networks? Click here for more information!
Meet Eric Hoffman, Sr. Tier 1 Support Desk Technician
Today we turn the spotlight on Eric Hoffman. Eric quickly became a tremendous asset to the entire team at The 20. Read below to find out more about Eric.
What do you do here at The 20?
Senior T1 overnight
Describe The 20 in three words…
synergistic, personable, family
As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to play Major League Baseball.
What’s the most challenging thing about your job?
In a largely solo-shift role, I must be able to handle a lot of variables thrown my way.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Becoming a United States Marine
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
The willpower to put in the work
What do you like most about The 20?
I know that my voice is heard.
What do you like to do in your spare time? / What are your hobbies?
I like to paint and newly into 3d printing.
Where are you going on your next vacation?
The couch, the pandemic pretty much shelved travel for us.
What’s your top life hack?
Wake up 15 minutes early and get started with your day as if you have not. You’re now ahead of schedule and can use that 15 minutes as a time out if needed.
Interested in working with Eric at The 20? We’re hiring! Check out our Careers page for more info.
What is the Channel?
“The Channel” is a special term with its own special meaning to MSPs and other B2B technical solution providers. The channel is also a business term for a more symbiotic pipeline of vendors working towards a shared ecosystem. In short, the channel is just the path to market for B2B services and providers.
This term isn’t quite steeped in the near mystic qualities attributed to it from every technical trade show who swears their fealty to the channel, but it is still important. The channel is a fast-moving river of opportunity for B2B services and products in any industry. The hard part is finding it. When you ride within the channel, you are propelled forward, from knowledge to pricing.
The channel in tech is just a bunch of people who talk to each other, work with each other, and build greater ecosystems along the lines of business deals and alliances. If you don’t drink the Kool-aid, this doesn’t sound like much at first glance. Joining the IT channel means getting the momentum from the rest of the movement to push forward faster than you could by yourself. The channel can be the tool to unlock your potential, but only when tapped correctly.
How the Channel Works
A channel works because people believe in it. Some of the tech sector believes it created The Channel itself, but in reality they just created a more efficient channel than most other industries, and earlier. This faith in its success and faith in its value has kept it relevant as natural market forces keep it stable or risk turning it over to another stack. It isn’t the exception, it’s an ideal realization of the concept.
Technology is too complicated to make choices on every single solution every single time. Tech has had schisms since the first moments of commercial viability. When you have limited choices which are approved by other vendors, you have a bare-minimum guarantee that you’ll get a certain experience. If you buy A, B, and C, you know that they’ll work with D.
This limitation of choice, combination of vendor efforts, and similar leads to a system where a tech company can make an easy choice, or buy into the fringe. You have a named brand which is like a recipe for building a certain stack, but you can make substitutions if you know how.
The channel also works similar to cable TV. By certain vendors partnering with (or acquiring) other solutions, you get a stack with certain choices depending on the primary vendor. You get the Kaseya bundle, the ConnectWise bundle, or similar. You can still choose to piecemeal things together, but each vendor offers a basic set of integrated solutions to get you from zero to a full business operation.
This packaging provides power to the channel. You don’t need to get the bundle to succeed, but it’s cheaper if you don’t know how to shop or don’t have the time or personnel to continually make things work. The MSP channel offers shortcuts, for a price.
What it Means
The channel and The Channel are two different entities entirely. The Channel is a set of conferences and trade shows which feed into one another. If you’re an MSP in technology, you’re probably already acquainted with parts of The Channel. The 20’s own VISION conference is a part of The Channel, Robin Robins is a part too, ChannelPro contributes as well, etc. This is just a piece of the pie.
The greater channel in technology is the set of pathways which work toward technical integration. It’s a filter for the selection limiting specific vendors who will try to play nice with others. This means you don’t need to dig as deep to find who works with whom, you can just jump around on the list.
A waterway can have multiple channels, but not every channel is equal. Some channels are direct, others are slow or bottlenecked. The right channel gets you from where you are to where you want to be with minimal issues. The wrong channel is a riptide.
The channel in general business is just a combined industry effort to partially standardize certain elements. It’s just one of the many roads leading to Rome. The difference is that one is well-traveled and well-regulated if you don’t know exactly where you’re going, but others are less predictable. Convenience comes at a cost in most industries, but the TCO can work out cheaper. The channel means convenience, but it also means a cost for that convenience.
Why it Exists
Each channel is an example of financial symbiosis. A complete solution is worth more than a bunch of better partial solutions when it’s trivial to put the pieces together. It’s easier to squeeze a little money out of from a giant when they provide an audience bigger than a vendor could bring in themselves.
The Channel exists because people want convenience and are willing to jump in to find it. More traditional channels exist because it’s easier to sell a solution which has a context. Most vendors can’t be one stop shops, but that doesn’t mean a one stop shop for most people can’t exist. It just requires cooperation from multiple vendors and a way to package it all up.
Almost every industry is going to have some kind of B2B channel flowing through it, if not multiple tributaries each pushing their own stacks. Some options will span each offering like a town in a spot where rivers meet, while others will buy into their one channel. It all just depends on the economics of competition and cooperation.
Channels are like the business equivalents of a city. Cities form because they make sense in a location to settle due to the resources and the routes in and out. Each channel is just a business abstraction of a city. They exist because there is greater strength in cooperation than in continuous wildcatting.
The Channel as a Business Concept
The channel is a powerful business concept. While The Channel tech clings to is the extreme of the concept, it is just an implementation of a standard channel in its ideal scenario. It is just a business concept which exists when businesses work together for the greater movement of their industry.
A channel is a symbiosis brought about by the movement of the industry rather than the ideal movement of each individual constituent. A rising tide raises all boats so to speak. You trade the individualistic angle for the push you add to the combined whole.
Just because your peers are involved doesn’t mean you need to be involved with a specific channel. If you do things differently, then find the right way forward. A channel is a path forward for businesses which fit the agreed upon ideal use case, you just need to know what each channel brings to you.
The channel is the B2B equivalent of a cable package. Everyone you know may want one, but which one works for what you need? If not, what pieces can you get from where and how do they work with one another?
The IT channel is an organic ecosystem of interdependent services tied into one another. The quicker you drink the Koolaid, the faster you come out ahead. Pieces can function on their own, but they tend to work best in conjunction with others in the channel unless you’re willing to add value. You can split your services out, but you need to offer something extra.
It is a construct which benefits its constituents and its audience. You can either leverage it, or let it push you out of the picture. Understand what it brings and how you can use it to succeed.
Meet J.B. Frierson, Senior Account Manager
Today we turn the spotlight on J.B. Frierson. J.B. quickly became a tremendous asset to the entire team at The 20. Read below to find out more about J.B.
What do you do here at The 20?
I am an account manager.
Describe The 20 in three words…
Scalable. Innovative. Brilliant.
As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be an engineer.
What’s the most challenging thing about your job?
It’s a tremendous opportunity and challenge to partner with our clients to help them grow their business and achieve their goals.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Learning sales allowing me to grow my clients here at The 20.
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
Hard work and dedication.
What do you like most about The 20?
The culture.
What do you like to do in your spare time? / What are your hobbies?
Spend time with family. I like to workout, read, and write.
Where are you going on your next vacation?
Cabo San lucas
What’s your top life hack?
Plan my weeks on Sunday
Interested in working with J.B. at The 20? We’re hiring! Check out our Careers page for more info.
Meet Eric Emerson of E-Squared IT!
Tell us a little about your MSP…
E-Squared IT is located in Clinton, New Jersey and has been open since 2015. Things really started taking off in 2018 right around the time we joined The 20.
How long have you been a member of The 20?
We’ve been with The 20 since around May 2018.
Why did your MSP originally look to partner with The 20?
I came from small / medium sized MSPs before going independent and lacked the knowledge necessary to grow our MSP to that next level. Outside of some mastermind groups / reddit focused discussion groups there was zero companies that had what I was looking for.
Tell us about the biggest change in your business since joining The 20.
Biggest change for us was our revenue. In 2020 alone in a down economy, we’ve more than tripled our monthly recurring revenue. It has been a serious game changer.
What do you like most about being a member of The 20?
The biggest benefit is the collaboration with other like-minded MSPs. We tried to start a local mastermind group of local MSPs here in Jersey and were essentially told to go kick rocks. No one wants to share their “secret sauce” with the competition. Now with the20 we can share ideas of what works and what doesn’t work without having to worry about potentially losing local business.
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
100% you have to treat your clients like they could leave at any moment. Treat your clients like they are your only client, and spend time learning about who they are as people along with the tech stuff. The soft skills are becoming just as important, if not more important than the tech knowledge
What are your biggest business challenges?
Our biggest challenge this year was delivering on our QBR / customer service promise during a pandemic. It became extremely hard to connect with our customers when its chaos in the outside world.
What are your areas of focus for 2021?
Our biggest areas of focus will be continuing the sales and marketing push we did for 2020, but doing so in a controlled way that doesn’t degrade overall service delivery. This year was A LOT, all at once.
What advice would you share with an MSP looking to scale their business?
Marketing and sales matter more than you could possibly imagine. Carve out a budget for Google Adwords / Linkedin and push every dollar you can to those platforms.
What book are you currently reading?
The last book I finished was Everything is F*cked by Mark Manson!
Favorite blogs / podcasts
I cant seem to find any MSP / tech related blogs that aren’t overly vendor heavy, so im going to have to offer up the king of fake business himself Mr Tim Dillon on the Tim Dillon show. He’s a national treasure and must be protected at all costs.
Interested in becoming a member like E-Squared IT? Click here for more information!
Windows Virtual Desktop is a service hosted on Azure which allows clients to consolidate their workflow like a traditional RDS server, but with a Windows 10 VM instead which is more intuitive to most users. This is a powerful technology for MSP’s which can cut both you and your client’s costs, reduce technical overhead, and increase security. It works out to a large win for everyone involved for most workflows.
Azure has become one of the biggest virtualization and cloud platforms with a medley of offerings and services which meld together into a Windows administrator’s sweetest dream. Let’s see exactly what Windows Virtual Desktop is, what it does well, how to get the most out of the platform if you’re not used to the cloud, and the security and backup features you get as well.
What Is Windows Virtual Desktop?
Windows Virtual Desktop boils down to a solution which allows you to manage a cloud Windows environment without having to manage the tedious parts of infrastructure, maintenance, or the pain of licensing. It is the natural evolution of RDP. We previously wrote about the more technical aspects of what makes a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure work. Let’s look at the features Windows Virtual Desktop offers to get a taste for what it does in practice rather than theory. Microsoft lays their Windows Virtual Desktop offering out with the following features:
- Set up a multi-session Windows 10 deployment that delivers a full Windows 10 with scalability
- Virtualize Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise and optimize it to run in multi-user virtual scenarios
- Provide Windows 7 virtual desktops with free Extended Security Updates
- Bring your existing Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and Windows Server desktops and apps to any computer
- Virtualize both desktops and apps
- Manage Windows 10, Windows Server, and Windows 7 desktops and apps with a unified management experience
You get the ability to use a multi-user, multi-session version of Windows 10 which means a more simplified changeover and an easier licensing situation. You also have the option for Windows Server or an up-to-date version of Windows 7. Desktops and apps alone can be virtualized with this solution.
Windows Virtual Desktop makes it easy to get users virtualized cheaper and more efficiently than other solutions. You handle the setup, they handle the infrastructure (Azure AD) and maintenance (mostly). Microsoft also makes it easier than RDP, you don’t need a gateway server and RDP setups deployed to each desktop, your users just use a simple native app or an HTML5 webapp.
What Makes Windows Virtual Desktop Amazing?
This solution basically provides you a way to make virtual desktops for clients to work off of (which are especially important with work from home), but that isn’t all it does. It also allows support for Windows 7 which is compliant (i.e. it is patched and up to date from the vendor), and it allows porting over existing RDP setups. You get everything a traditional Windows virtualization solution could provide, plus an easier way to administer it and use it. It offers an easy line for clients to move over as well.
If you have clients with old Windows 7 desktops or Windows Server 2008 R2 boxes, you know how painful they can be to manage. The extended support on its own is far too expensive for most companies to realistically consider, so they take their chances with VM’s or trying to isolate the machine from the rest of the network. No matter how it’s done, it’s either expensive or painful for everyone involved.
The Azure setup streamlines maintaining a domain environment. Domain costs can become especially costly per user in smaller traditional setups. Ease of use is a general feature across the board for Azure. That being said, Azure can be hard to get going with since there are just so many features and options.
Augmenting Azure
We offer project services for migrations to help our partners focus on business while we focus on the boring parts. We partnered with both Crayon and Nerdio to augment our Azure offerings. Azure is complicated and can be difficult to navigate, but solutions like Crayon and Nerdio both have different offerings which fill in the gaps. They help handle translating the client’s need into something which can be cost effective with Windows Virtual Desktop (among many other Azure services).
Transitioning to Azure is easy if you’re somewhat technical and can follow directions, but you can end up with 10 different solutions which do the same thing and vary wildly in cost. The cost all depends on how well you understand the platform and what you need to satisfy the client.
Any MSP can handle the technical side, but the platform requires knowledge and experience to leverage it as efficiently as possible. It can be hard to find the time to maintain your business obligations while staying ahead of the dizzying number of XaaS platforms. Paying for a project to migrate or working with a vendor to simplify Azure and Windows Virtual Desktop setup can ensure your first migrations are a success and stay on track for cost and expectations.
It’s easy once you understand it, but it takes a lot of time and effort to get to the point it all comes together naturally. You can choose to learn on your own slowly, or you can get a jumps jump-start with expertise to immerse you in Azure and learn as you go. Neither solution is the right answer for all MSP’s or businesses, but if it gets overwhelming, there are options to get through the most mundanely challenging parts.
Azure Backup and Security
Azure offers a backup service which makes recovery and backup administration trivial if you’ve already bought into the Azure platform. Azure Backup doesn’t just work for devices hosted on Azure, you can also run it on traditional on-premise setups. It isn’t always the most cost effective solution outside of Azure however.
You also have a simplified network interface which abstracts your networking away from supporting a virtual appliance. Some providers still require you to support virtual firewalls and similar if you want the service to work and be secure. Azure makes it easy in general and keeps it easy enough that some power users can even administer it.
Azure Backups running as a cloud appliance rather than an on-premise machine or similar provides an advantage for security as well. Some crypto and ransomware variants are known to target HyperV machines or certain backup solutions to make recovery more painful. It’s a lot harder to do when it’s a one way transfer into the cloud rather than a machine sharing the same network.
I mentioned compliance earlier with Windows 7 with Windows Virtual Desktop, but this is a huge selling point to some clients. They need a legacy OS and they need to do things right or else have a hugely inconvenient network isolation project. We’ve had vendors suggest clients with applications on Windows Server 2008 R2 literally isolate and spin up a full, separate domain (intentionally using different credentials and user structuring), maintain a jumpbox (or two) which is at least partially isolated, and then suggest users transfer data by moving it from their system to the jumpbox, and then to the secure server to try and remain secure because extended support was too expensive. Or, they could just use Windows Virtual Desktop.
Conclusion
Windows Virtual Desktop won’t fit every client or every workflow, but it is a powerful offering and an efficient tool for many companies. Windows Virtual Desktop expounds on the possibilities in Azure with virtualization and creates the natural evolution to RDP and similar tools and technologies. Understand what it does and how, and you can understand when to use it, or when to not.
Services from Nerdio or Crayon can give you a shortcut to getting the most out of Windows Virtual Desktop and other Azure offerings. Windows Virtual Desktop is powerful, but it can be complicated if you are not familiar with the sheer volume of options. You can make the same basic system a dozen ways with a dozen different prices that all work the same; understanding how the options work and are billed is essential to making the right choices. It’s not hard on its own, but it can be when you’re trying to balance a business and selecting technology.
Sometimes it just works out cheaper long-term to rely on another expert to make the best choices and build the best experience the first few times. It’s important to remember how much your time or obligation is worth. We enable our partners to make use of these technologies to get the most bang for their buck.
Windows Virtual Desktop can provide an easier to manage environment which can be cheaper to operate for many clients. It abstracts away many security and infrastructure concerns, as well as unexpected costs. I’m yet to hear of a client moving to Azure or Windows Virtual Desktop and deciding to move back due to anything other than poor planning. The advantages are too great once you understand them.
Meet Mike Bramm of BomberJacket Networks!
Tell us a little about your MSP…
BomberJacket Networks is located in Minnesota, Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St Paul), Established: 2001, Previously a Value Added Reseller- System Integrator
How long have you been a member of The 20?
5 months
Why did your MSP originally look to partner with The 20?
24x7x365 Support Desk/NOC
Tell us about the biggest change in your business since joining The 20.
Breaking old Break/Fix habits
What do you like most about being a member of The 20?
Tim’s Sales Pitch
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
Marketing, Hard Work, Persistence
What are your biggest business challenges?
Having enough time
What are your areas of focus for 2020?
Marketing
What advice would you share with an MSP looking to scale their business?
Join The 20 Way
What book are you currently reading?
You Can’t Be Everywhere – Marie Wiese
Favorite blogs / podcasts
Building a Story Brand with Donald Miller
Interested in becoming a member like BomberJacket Networks? Click here for more information!
Microsoft Azure and What it Means for Your Business
Microsoft Azure has made waves in the virtualization and cloud computing space since its inception. It’s not the only player in the game, but it has quickly become one of the biggest and one of the best for many small and medium businesses. Azure rivals Amazon’s AWS offering in terms of scalability and scope, but occupies a different market space in some respects.
Companies or entities who primarily use Microsoft products will benefit from looking into Azure. If you run an MSP, this is going to be most of your clients. Most businesses leverage Microsoft products in some capacity, so there are advantages for many technical and non-technical companies in general. Licensing costs can eat the financial advantage some platforms have over Azure.
The purpose of this article is to explain the very basics of Microsoft Azure, what makes cloud computing work, and how it can be a boon to a business. This document will be somewhat technical, but parts of it will be accessible to end-users and clients to help explain some of the core concepts in a way that makes sense. Let’s go over cloud computing, cloud infrastructure and virtualization, Windows virtual desktop, serverless computing and more, the general cost, and what resellers offer.
Cloud Computing in a Nutshell
Almost everyone has heard of the cloud at this point. It’s not even correct to say that the cloud is the future; the cloud is essential for scalability. The cloud is a case study in the economics of scale in computing. The cloud is a culmination of computing knowledge, computing abilities, and the hardware and bandwidth to make it all work.
Pretty much anything you can think of in standard computing exists in the cloud. If you need a server, you can virtualize one. If you need a data store, you can spin one up. As long as it is something which can be done conventionally, there’s probably a cloud provider which does it. The joke in IT is that the cloud is just someone else’s computer, which while cynical, isn’t wrong either.
Cloud computing is just someone else abstracting the data center infrastructure required to run different infrastructures or systems into an offering which plays off of their scale. You’re paying a little more regularly to not have to deal with matching CPU architectures, balancing racks, and having to maintain equipment. Someone else handles that so you get to pay for exactly what you need and so you can scale without having to deal with the hassle. You trade risk for an amortized and averaged out cost. We’ll get more into these factors with the cost impact section.
You can think of it as looking to rent for a bit more per month than you’d pay to own in exchange for a less unpredictable experience and without having the same degree of maintenance. When something breaks, it’s the owners problem to fix it. The cloud hosting provider is responsible for maintaining the infrastructure, the backend that lets you work, and resolving internal issues. Tasks that used to take a whole team to maintain can be relegated to a single individual or even outsourced to an MSP to manage since the vendor handles the more painful parts.
Cloud Infrastructure and Virtualization
While most cloud platforms started with basic virtualization, they had to be able to adapt to and incorporate multiple types of infrastructure to be effective. Eventually the focus shifted from just being able to run “stuff” in the cloud to the cloud having to become an extension of your computing infrastructure. To put it simply, to have SaaS, you have to build the pieces which can allow PaaS, IaaS, etc. which can be repackage and resold as XaaS. Azure has this entire angle nailed, arguably better than basically any other provider (for most use cases).
Basics of Virtualization and Cloud Infrastructure
Feel free to skip this section if you’re already familiar with virtualization and cloud infrastructure in general.
Virtualization is the practice of running the equivalent of a specific computer system on a virtual machine (VM). Instead of installing the OS onto a physical computer, you install it into a controlled subsystem (which emulates a physical machine) running on a hypervisor. The hypervisor (HV) is the system which runs the operating system which maintains the virtual machine and the internal infrastructure to make it functional, but its health is independent of its virtual machines. If a virtual machine has an issue, the hypervisor shouldn’t be impacted (there are exceptions, ring -1 exploits, etc., but those are far beyond the scope of this article).
A VM should be a compartmentalization of the features it is supposed to abstract. The fewer features you have, the fewer moving pieces there are, and the less likely it is for something to go wrong. The HV shouldn’t run essential roles for a domain or similar (in most cases), and the individual VM’s can afford to do less. With a hardware setup, you have a limit based on the hardware, the cloud tends to be infinite for all practical intents and purposes.
To make a VM useful, there has to be infrastructure in place to make it function. The idea to virtualize came first, but the infrastructure is what makes it all work. You have to handle VPNs, routing, network setups, etc. to make a virtualized machine do anything. The work had been done, so it was only natural to expand the offerings to do more and more as it became more practical and refined.
The Advantage of Azure with Virtualization and Cloud Infrastructure
The easiest way to understand this growth is to look at the question: “Why do companies use virtualization?” Virtualization is a way to reduce risk and (usually) costs; you trade absolute efficiency for something which is less prone to incidents and accidents, but is easier to maintain. The easier the process, the easier the client will be sold on the whole system. This is the angle Azure has taken in general.
Azure isn’t the cheapest provider by any stretch, but they’re one of the easiest to migrate to (for Microsoft solutions), and one of the easiest to get going with. The basic Azure console is easy enough the average technician can figure it out with a little help from Google (mainly for differences between options). Resellers make it even easier by restricting options while simplifying controls.
Microsoft Azure is basically a one stop shop for setting up a virtualized environment. You can set up VM’s, set up the infrastructure they need, and so much more. Data stores, VLANs, etc. are all trivial to get working with Azure. Networking setup is a matter of clicking the right things instead of handling firewall appliances like some older providers. Azure even offers backups, advanced desktop options (DaaS), etc. If you can do it in a data center or with standard hardware, you can do it with Azure.
Windows Virtual Desktop
Azure’s primary Desktop as a Service (DaaS) solution is Windows Virtual Desktop. It is the spiritual successor to traditional terminal servers allowing each individual use to have their environment imaged out of a standard base system. You pick the applications and similar, the rest is handled by the system itself.
Windows Virtual Desktop allows you to cut down on resources for what kind of system you or your clients need to work. Pretty much any basic laptop or desktop is going to be good enough to work off of no matter what the client needs to do. You get the advantages of a terminal server environment without having the resources shared (unless you want to). Most services offering this type of virtual desktop system are going to use Azure as the backend due to licensing costs among other factors.
Windows Virtual Desktop is the culmination of all of the advanced features of Azure distilled into an offering. The process appears completely transparent from the infrastructure down to the end-user’s login. It takes the pain away from IT departments and MSPs while offering an improved user experience which can be quite cost effective.
Serverless Computing and More
Azure leverages the cloud to provide even more types of offerings which fit in where standard cloud offerings don’t. Serverless computing isn’t anything new, but it is much easier with platforms like Azure. Consumer AI and other offerings exist as well which can be used to build all sorts of new technologies, all in the same place.
Serverless computing is the practice of abstracting a program beyond the confines of where it will run. The system itself isn’t lacking of a server, but the design process and implementation is; you think outside of the traditional paradigm of being at the whims of the operating system and local elements in favor of using standard interfaces and abstract implementations of traditional operating system functions. Basically, your programmers are focused on programming and an authority (for the system employed) and the vendor (where it is hosted) maintains the overall security and other nuts and bolts for the rest of the process.
Azure isn’t just a platform for developing an IT infrastructure, but it can serve as a way to run applications and services, and tie them all together as necessary. If you’re dealing with .NET or C#, they’re one of the best places to move these applications. The initial migration can be a little painful, but the reduction in maintenance (especially with a Windows environment) is worth the cost.
Microsoft Azure Cost
Azure tends to be one of the more expensive cloud providers for many use cases, but it makes up for that cost with what it offers. When you’re calculating the cost of a cloud provider, you can’t just look at the cost of equipment versus the cost of the cloud. What all goes into the instantiation, maintenance, and service of your infrastructure?
The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is what really matters when shopping these solutions. For some IT shops, this means running everything on Azure just won’t make sense internally, and that’s okay. For most other companies which use Microsoft products, Azure has a lot to offer. The biggest issue with looking at Azure is figuring out how to compare the apples and oranges with traditional offerings.
Azure works on a basis of cost of computing. The more you use it, the more it costs. For virtual desktop environments, you can look at their estimates to get an idea of what it takes to run a virtual desktop environment. They offer a standard calculator as well to get an idea of what you’re looking at for each item. Keep in mind though, licensing and similar is included with most offerings.
How much does it cost you to set up and maintain a server? What happens when a drive blows or the power surges? How do you back it all up? How many people do you or your client keep on the payroll just to do basic administration of the system? Who do you have on call, and how much do they cost to support it around the clock? What is the cost of down time, and how long does it take you to get back up? Are these resources split between multiple departments or tasks which have their own unpredictability?
The deeper you dig, the more favorable the cloud is going to be for most business purposes. The cloud functions on the economy of scale, and while a huge MSP with thousands and thousands of endpoints might be able to compete, the profit margin to liability ratio may not be worth it. As cloud providers get bigger and better, the thin margins on cloud computing services get thinner for smaller shops.
Resellers
Resellers such as Nerdio and Crayon work to make administering Azure easier without necessarily costing more. They use their volume to get competitive rates which allows them to help you help your client or yourself. Azure offers so many offerings it can feel daunting without someone to show you what you need first.
Nerdio dives deeper into Azure and combines their expertise with the raw backend that Azure provides. They offer IaaS, DaaS, and ITaaS (among other things). You’re paying a bit more to get assistance doing the harder parts of Microsoft Azure. While Azure itself is straightforward, it can be overwhelming with the sheer volume of options and configurability it offers. Services like Nerdio aim to reduce the complexity for you and your client.
Crayon is similar to Nerdio in what they offer, but the devil is in the details and the implementations. Crayon can allow an MSP to offload many of the more mundane duties. The exact differences that make them each offer unique value is a bit outside the scope for this article. We work with both since both are subtly different with their implementations and the other offerings they provide.
Meet Joe Martinez of KITE IT Pro!
Tell us a little about your MSP…
KITE IT Pro’s headquarters are in Tucson, AZ. In 2014, we started off as a consumer/business break-fix company and made the decision to primarily focus solely on managed services in 2018.
How long have you been a member of The 20?
We have been a member of The 20 for a little over 4 months.
Why did your MSP originally look to partner with The 20?
The size of our company really forced us to look to partner with The 20. Scaling our service delivery was a huge issue for us. We were not in the position to hire technicians or take on clients over a certain size in fear of service overload. As we added new clients, we were essentially growing ourselves out of business.
Tell us about the biggest change in your business since joining The 20.
CONFIDENCE. We knew that we delivered our clients great IT service, we just lacked confidence in scaling. Partnering with The 20 has allowed us to discover the difference between scaling our service and scaling our business.
What do you like most about being a member of The 20?
We love the community of The 20. The engagement between partners is priceless. In this industry, every company holds their secret sauce under lock and key. As members of The 20 community, we are learning from seasoned industry veterans on how to successfully grow and protect our business.
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
Hard work. The 20 is designed to alleviate growing pains. Everything you need to grow your business is in The 20. Hard work is not just defined on the hours you put into delivering service, hard work is also defined by the ability change who you are as an owner, partner, and as a company. Change is the hardest work you will ever have to do.
What are your biggest business challenges?
The biggest challenge we face is lead generation. It is always the principal challenge for each IT service company.
What are your areas of focus for 2020?
Lead generation and building a sales pipeline. Now that we can scale our service delivery, we can “get out” in front of potential clients and develop our business. The ability to get out from “behind the console” has been invaluable. We can make more effort towards focusing on lead generation and sales which is paramount to our success.
What advice would you share with an MSP looking to scale their business?
If you are looking to grow your MSP, join The 20. Stop wasting effort in hiring help desk technicians or getting yourself stuck “behind the console”. The 20 gives your company the freedom to focus on lead generation and sales…the scaling is provided. We wish we would have done this back in 2018.
What book are you currently reading?
Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen – Donald Miller
Favorite blogs / podcasts
Cyware Daily Threat Intelligence – Cyware Labs
Frankly IT (podcast)
Connecting The Channel (podcast)
Interested in becoming a member like KITE IT Pro? Click here for more information!
