I recently had a twitter discussion with Microsoft Partner, Fully Managed, and their Director of Technical Services Martin DesRosiers. Below is the full transcript from our conversation that provides deep insights from the perspective of a  partner on issues of migration, feedback and why users are choosing the cloud.

Josh: Give us a quick introduction to who you are and what you do.

Martin: Fully Managed™ provides IT Support and Management Services, IT Consulting and Project Services and Cloud Hosting Services to businesses and non-profit organizations in Vancouver, British Columbia. We nurture your technology systems 24/7 to enable you to grow and succeed in your businesses without worrying about the nuts and bolts.  My role with Fully Managed is the Director of Technical Services and I’m responsible for the entire technical team.

Josh: What are some companies you have helped migrate?

Martin: We have migrated companies spanning various industries, of all different shapes and sizes.  A notable client is SparkNet Communications who owns the JackFM brand.  They have a distributed workforce across Canada and the USA, and are composed of road warriors.  They are now leveraging the BPOS platform for their day to day needs. 

Josh: What is the migration experience like?

Martin: Overall migrations have been relatively seamless.  Compared to some Google Apps migrations in the past, the migration path from on-premise Exchange to hosted Exchange has been surprisingly smooth with little to no hiccups.  The end-user experience is familiar as people are comfortable using Microsoft products and in some cases, excited about using a new version of Exchange especially from an OWA perspective as we have migrated a lot of Exchange 2003 instances.

Josh: What kind of feedback have you received from users you have moved to the cloud?

Martin: A direct quote from the Director of Operations at SparkNet Communications:

“We move quickly and needed a technology infrastructure which was able to keep up with our business. Thanks to Fully Managed™ and the Microsoft Cloud, we no longer have to physically rely on our office space for reliable collaboration between our distributed team members.  When we recently experienced an internet outage in our corporate headquarters, our entire team was still connected remotely thanks to our entire IT infrastructure being in the cloud”

Josh: In your opinion, why should users move to the cloud?

Martin: The cloud-model fits most businesses, not all, but the majority can benefit from leveraging the cloud.  When it comes to e-mail it’s a no brainer, would you rather have your business critical e-mail tied to one physical server in one physical location with no guaranteed uptime? Or would you prefer to have your e-mail spread across multiple servers in military-grade datacenters with guaranteed uptime?  The challenge with implementing on-premise messaging solutions is that you cannot achieve the level of physical and geographical redundancy that the cloud offers.  It’s also at a fraction of the cost, depending upon how many users are within your organization.  If you were to compare the TCO of deploying an on-premise BPOS suite (Exchange, Communicator, SharePoint, LiveMeeting) you are looking at 6-10 physical or virtual servers versus a small monthly fee per user to leverage these same services hosted in the cloud.  Now you tell me which solution is more scalable? Which solution would have the lower TCO?  It’s not just a smart IT decision, but more importantly, it’s a smart business decision.

Josh: Do you have any tips or tricks for users making the move to the cloud?

Martin: Don’t be afraid, it’s inevitable, accept this logical transition of IT services.  A lot of people are shy in terms of considering or making the move to the cloud, mainly because it is unclear.  Once you remove the smoke and mirrors and evaluate the facts such as performing a TCO comparison of on-premise vs. hosted, it will become very clear which direction you should take.  I recently wrote an article for a leading Vancouver newspaper providing a high-level summary of the advantages of moving to the cloud: http://straight.com/article-335690/vancouver/cloud-computing-offers-advantages-small-businesses

Josh: Is there anything else you would like to tell us?

Martin: From an overall cloud perspective, I am excited about what Microsoft is doing.  With the recent announcement of Intune and our internal beta-testing of this product, it’s exciting times ahead.  We have been very successful selling and deploying the Microsoft Online suite and have converted many Google Apps customers.  Microsoft provides a much ‘richer’ experience and over time as Exchange 2010, SharePoint 2010, and Communicator 2007 R2 make their way into the BPOS suite, the competition will be left in the dust.  The evolution of the various platforms has also become the catalyst of the evolution of the Systems Engineer, this is an aspect often overlooked and I feel it aligns perfectly with our business model and our way of providing strategic IT consulting and management to our clients.  Those that do not embrace the cloud will be struggling to keep up with the competition that have recognized and embraced its true benefits.

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