4-page Partner Case Study - Posted 11/17/2008
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Online Services Enables IT Consultant to Refocus on Higher Value Strategic Services
SBS Pros is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner based in Torrance, California that provides IT services to organizations across the United States—from the federal government to small and mid-sized businesses. Although SBP Pros offers a comprehensive portfolio of IT services, particularly in the area of security, it often found that it was spending more time helping clients administer and maintain core infrastructure than helping them overcome business challenges. With the introduction of Microsoft® Online Services, SBS Pros can help its clients migrate their cumbersome in-house infrastructures to a cost-effective enterprise-class online service. This saves its clients money, strengthens its role as trusted advisor, and positions SBS Pros to more effectively help clients refocus on more strategic projects—which contribute more fully to SBS Pros’ bottom line.
Situation
Based in Torrance, California, SBS Pros is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that offers a complete portfolio of IT and infrastructure services. SBS Pros serves all industries, but has its strongest knowledge of line-of-business applications in the entertainment, healthcare, and real estate sectors. Its horizontal specialty is providing security. In fact, SBS stands for Secure Business Systems.
For larger accounts, such as the federal government and major broadcasting organizations, SBS typically provides security assessments. For many small and mid-sized businesses, SBS Pros provides outsourcing services for business critical applications such as Microsoft® Exchange Server.
SBS Pros found that it was spending a significant amount of time at client sites performing low-level administrative and operational tasks on its clients’ e-mail systems. “We were looking for a way we could ensure that our clients had reliable e-mail infrastructures,” says Stephen Alford, Director, SBS Pros, “and yet free our internal resources from routine administration so that we could focus on higher level consulting services.”
With the advent of the Business Productivity Online Suite from Microsoft Online Services, SBS Pros saw an opportunity for that scenario.
Solution
The Business Productivity Online Suite from Microsoft Online Services is a subscription-based offering that makes Microsoft Exchange Online, Office Live Meeting, Microsoft Office Communications Online, and Microsoft SharePoint® Online available to end users over the Internet. Microsoft hosts and manages the servers that support these offerings, while a partner such as SBS Pros provides local support and value-added services. Because Microsoft maintains the servers, subscribing organizations do not have to invest in the hardware or onsite support resources required to run such a solution. Instead, subscribing organizations pay Microsoft a low monthly fee based on the number of users accessing the services.
Now SBS Pros can offer its clients the enterprise-class collaboration services they have been seeking—including desktop and mobile e-mail, calendaring and contacts, instant messaging, presence, audio/video conferencing, shared workspaces and Web-conferencing applications—all supported by financially-backed service level agreements that promise high availability and high reli-ability. Subscribing organizations gain all the advantages afforded by these powerful collaboration tools, with virtually none of the overhead.
“We see Microsoft Online Services as offering real benefits because all our clients—especially the small and medium businesses—want to be as competitive as possible,” explains Alford. “For a minimal fee and no huge startup costs, organizations can have an enterprise-class environment where they will have guaranteed access to their data, anywhere, anytime. And it’s backed by a company that nobody else can match in resources.”
Benefits
The Business Productivity Online Suite enables SBS Pros to bring enterprise-class software to companies with as few as five users. And this translates into benefits for both SBS Pros and its clients.
Expanding Reach by Extending Offerings
Microsoft Online Services is opening new market opportunities for SBS Pros. Its clients now have the benefits of an enterprise-class communication and collaboration solution, without having to support an onsite infrastructure. Any customization or service the client might need is provided by SBS Pros, a trusted partner that understands their business and can add value to the standard solution.
For SBS Pros, a typical client that wants to implement Exchange Server might have 10 to 15 seats. “Looking at hardware, software and labor costs, they are looking at $15,000–$20,000 right off the bat,” says Alford. “If I can show them that they can get into this for a low monthly subscription fee, plus have the trust and confidence that they’re getting a service from Microsoft, that’s backed by Microsoft, and that keeps us in the loop as a trusted partner and consultant. For us, that’s a great offering and a pretty easy sell.”
Alford also sees Microsoft Online Services as a door opener for new clients. “It might even give us an opportunity that we didn’t have before in getting into new client scenarios. We can use this to open doors and then can come in as an unbiased third party and make sure they have the appropriate security mechanisms in place to comply with whatever their industry requires.”
Supporting Escrow Technologies
The Business Productivity Online Suite from Microsoft Online Services is the ideal solution for many of SBS Pros’ clients. Consider Escrow Technologies, a company that provides escrow services for real estate transactions. Because of the highly volatile real estate market, the size of the company’s staff has fluctuated recently.
The employees of Escrow Technologies have always relied heavily on e-mail to communicate internally and externally with lenders, realtors, and clients. But this meant that the company had multiple e-mail domains to maintain, which caused increasing problems with spam and legitimate concerns about security. “It’s been a revolving door for them with people coming and going and having had access to all kinds of sites,” says Alford. “From a security point of view, it’s been a nightmare.”
Managing all these issues was straining the resources that SBS Pros had assigned to support Escrow Technologies’ infrastructure, but given the slowing economy, Escrow Technologies could not justify the cost of adding more resources from SBS Pros to maintain the infrastructure. When SBS Pros suggested that Escrow Technologies might eliminate its infrastructure and security concerns and lower its costs by moving to Microsoft Online Services, Escrow Technologies seized the opportunity.
”To Escrow Technologies,” says Alford, “a low, monthly, per-user subscription fee and the knowledge that all of its management and security issues could be taken care of by a company capable of throwing a lot more resources at those challenges than we could was very inviting.”
Increasing Revenue by Opening a New Revenue Stream
For every SBS Pros client that signs up for these online services, SBS Pros receives income—while incurring virtually no overhead. And SBS Pros receives a recurring revenue stream from Microsoft based on the value of the contract for the length of time the contract is in place.
“This opportunity significantly adds to our revenue,” says Alford. “Microsoft Online Services frees us up from lower value services, such as maintenance and infrastructure, and allows us to focus on the consulting work where we provide more value to our clients and can charge accordingly higher rates. Plus, we gain a nice recurring income without having to do much other than make sure that we are the primary point of contact between the client and the Online Service.”
Increasing Business Velocity by Shortening Sales Cycles
Reducing time to solution benefits both SBS Pros and its clients. With Microsoft Online Services, SBS Pros can close deals more quickly because there is no lengthy hardware design, procurement, or configuration process. Development teams can perform value-added migration, customization, and configuration services remotely—which according to Microsoft research can lower costs to a value-added service provider by as much as 40 percent. Moreover, because Microsoft manages the hardware setup and provisioning, SBS Pros can redirect its resources toward creating higher-value strategic services for its clients. This enables SBS Pros to complete projects more quickly or take on additional projects without increasing headcount.
“First and foremost, we’re technologists,” says Alford, “and we really want to focus on bridging the gap between technology and business productivity. Microsoft Online Services means we don’t have to stress and strain our resources on the maintenance or operation side any more. Instead, we can focus on the planning side and initiating new projects and business opportunities.”
Leading with a Proven Product
Alford states that, “The Microsoft name is very helpful to us opening doors. We can offer a resource that we could never fully offer ourselves because we could never grow to that size. When we resell Microsoft Online Services, we know that our customers are in good hands and that we’ll continue to play a supporting role in the capacity of a trusted advisor.”
SBS Pros also feels it has an advantage because it is representing a proven communication and collaboration solution. According to Alford, several of SBS Pros’ clients have looked at other solutions, such as Gmail and Google Apps, but they have come away unconvinced. “I think the advantage that we have going in with this Microsoft offering is that the product has already proven itself as a thick client, and we’ve already proven our expertise in making it work for clients. We’re just carrying that expertise over to the thin client, and our clients are comfortable with that. With the Google applications, nobody feels that they have any hands-on expertise because it’s always been out in the cloud and nobody has ever had the opportunity to support it onsite.”
Providing Peace of Mind
“We have a long, trusted relationship with Microsoft going back to 1989,” says Alford. “So it gives us piece of mind knowing that we can focus on adding real value to our clients—working on improving productivity and business processes—without having to constantly worry: Are we up on the latest patches? Is there sufficient redundancy? Are we checking all the alerts? Microsoft Online Services alleviates those headaches and allows us to focus on what we’re best at. In the end, that’s best for our clients and best for our bottom line as well.”
“We have a long, trusted relationship with Microsoft going back to 1989,” says Alford. “So it gives us piece of mind knowing that we can focus on adding real value to our clients—working on improving productivity and business processes—without having to constantly worry: Are we up on the latest patches? Is there sufficient redundancy? Are we checking all the alerts? Microsoft Online Services alleviates those headaches and allows us to focus on what we’re best at. In the end, that’s best for our clients and best for our bottom line as well.”
Microsoft Online Services
Microsoft Online Services is a business-class communications and collaboration software offering delivered as a subscription service, hosted by Microsoft, and sold with partners. These services help make it easier for customers to rapidly and cost-effectively access the most up-to-date technologies, and are designed for rapid deployment to provide customers with streamlined communications, simplified management, and business-class reliability and security.
For IT staff, Microsoft Online Services helps reduce the burden of performing routine IT management tasks such as installation, provisioning, ongoing maintenance, patches, updates, and upgrades, making it possible for them to spend more time on initiatives that move the business forward. These services are backed by strong SLAs and are designed to meet the regulatory compliance and reliability needs of enterprise customers. On a technical level, the services boast the sophistication and reliability that customers expect from Microsoft, which continues to invest heavily in building data centers to support these services.
For more information, visit: www.microsoft.com/online
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about SBS Pros products and services, call (310) 375-5759 or visit the Web site at: www.sbspros.net
