Taking Your Clients to the Cloud
A Perspective for MSPs
This article isn’t about why your MSP should be moving services to the cloud. It’s not about the value of cloud services to the typical small to mid-sized business. There are a million articles on those topics — including a few on this blog! Besides, if you’re in the managed services industry, you already know that the cloud is where it’s at — and where it’s going to be at for the next decade unless something drastic happens or an even better paradigm emerges.
As for your clients — the SMBs you serve — they’re likely warming up quickly to the cloud, and the many benefits it can bring their growing businesses. A survey published by Datto found that 93% of MSPs expect their clients to have at least half of their workloads in the cloud by 2024. The secret’s out — the cloud works, and it’s here to stay.
So, if your clients aren’t moving key IT functions to the cloud, it doesn’t matter what their reason is — maybe they’re just being complacent, or maybe they still don’t trust the cloud —it’s your responsibility as their MSP to get them on board. MSPs exist because the break/fix model is no longer enough; an organization chooses to work with an MSP in order to streamline their entire IT infrastructure in a way that allows for greater operational efficiency and overall profitability. You can’t help clients achieve this while also indulging their nephophobia (yes, that means a ‘fear of clouds’). Ten years ago, maybe you could, but not now. Not in 2022.
What is this article about, then, if not why your MSP and its clients should be pro-cloud?
It’s about how to get clients on board with cloud computing, and how to help clients who already are on board get the most out of their adoption of cloud-based services.
Conquering Clients’ Nephophobia
Assume Nothing
Unfortunately, many SMB owners are still fundamentally wary about the cloud. The very idea of cloud computing makes them uneasy — or, rather, their idea of cloud computing. It’s crucial to keep in mind, when broaching the topic of adopting cloud-based offerings with your clients, that many SMB owners still think of the cloud as … well, a literal cloud. In our first blog post in this series on cloud computing, we brought up a favorite joke among IT people: There is no cloud. It’s just someone else’s computer. The reason this joke is popular is because it contains, like any good joke, a strong element of truth. People often do believe — even if on an unconscious level — that the cloud is somehow less physically real than traditional computing technology.
Bottom line — don’t assume your clients know what the cloud even is, let alone how it can help their businesses run more smoothly. Before delving into the different cloud service models (IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS) with a client, or explaining the many business benefits of cloud computing (greater scalability, agility, flexibility, etc.), make sure your client understands the basics: what the cloud is and how it works. Use analogies to get away from IT jargon, while bearing in mind that these analogies are often imperfect. If you patiently break down cloud computing into familiar concepts at the outset, it will save you lots of time and effort down the road when you need to persuade your clients to evolve their cloud infrastructure even more.
Keep It Concrete
Another important thing to keep in mind when discussing the cloud with clients is the importance of keeping the conversation concrete. When you are absolutely certain that a client understands what the cloud is, and you’ve started discussing the business benefits of cloud computing, don’t just harp on about greater ‘scalability’ and ‘business agility.’ Give the buzzwords a rest, and instead, describe concrete scenarios in which cloud-based services would be of help. This is where being intimately familiar with a client’s business is powerful. You know specific struggles your clients have had, crises they’ve endured. Don’t be afraid to bring those up. “Remember the time that server crashed …” Make them feel the need for cloud computing in their gut. Make it feel REAL.
Don’t Sugarcoat
Finally, while you don’t want to engage in fear-mongering, lean into making your clients feel the urgency of the need to move business to the cloud. Bring up a few statistics that show just how popular cloud-services are becoming. Tell them the SMBs that hold out on the cloud for a few more years will simply be too far behind to catch up when they finally decide to get with the program and adopt cloud-computing for major IT functions. In other words, tell them the truth.
Helping Clients Get to Cloud Nine
Let’s say you’ve got a client who has embraced the importance of cloud computing, and who has a basic grasp of the ways in which cloud-based services can help usher their business into the future. What now? Is your job done?
Not at all. In fact, that’s just the beginning. A client who’s eager to adopt cloud-based services — hopefully most if not all of your clients fit this bill — stands to get the most out of their migration if they conceptualize it in the right way. This is where you come in, as their MSP. By framing the value and role of cloud-based services in the right way for your SMB clients, you can help them commit more fully and enthusiastically to their cloud transformation. So, how should your MSP go about framing things?
First, it’s essential that you clarify what your role is as their MSP. Convey to clients — through marketing, through direct interactions, and most importantly, through your actions — that your job is to guide them in a continuous and ongoing digital transformation. In the context of orchestrating their move to the cloud, this means getting them to see that the migration isn’t a ‘one-and-done’ kind of deal. It’s not like once an SMB is ‘in the cloud,’ it can rest on its laurels. On the contrary, an SMB in today’s fast-paced digital world has to maintain and continually improve upon its cloud infrastructure, and remain on the lookout for the best cloud-based offerings on the market. This is of course a tall order, which is why
more and more SMBs and turning to MSPs for help with their cloud strategy. But the first step in getting your clients to turn to you for help is getting them to see the need for help.
Digital transformation expert, Bernard Marr, predicts that one of the biggest cloud trends in 2022 will be a shift in focus from “the deployment of cloud tools and platforms in order to improve a specific function … towards more holistic strategies centered on enterprise-wide cloud migration” (read Marr’s Full Forbes article here). This strikes us as spot on, which is why we’re urging MSPs to take initiative in explaining to their clients that when it comes to a business living in the cloud, there are levels. What counts as being a cloud-oriented business now is different from what will count in a year, two years … five years.
In fact, the term “digital transformation” might be a misnomer. A better term is “digital evolution,” as it better captures the ongoing nature of digitalization. If you can get your clients to adopt this perspective, you won’t have to twist their arm every time you want to introduce a new cloud-based service into their IT environment — they’ll be right there with you, eager to take the next step in their cloud journey.
Facilitate Your Clients’ Cloud Migrations with The 20’s Platform
The rise of the cloud presents your MSP with a golden opportunity. Moving your clients’ IT functions to the cloud was the first step. Now, in 2022, MSPs face a new challenge: perfecting and refining their clients’ cloud strategies to accommodate remote/hybrid work, repel cyberattacks, and integrate different (and currently somewhat disparate) cloud-based solutions into a cohesive whole. If you can do all that, you’ll add tremendous value to your clients’ businesses and earn even more of their trust.
It can be hard to ensure your clients get the most out of their digital transformation and cloud migrations. Are you using the best tools for the job? At The 20, we have worked with multiple vendors to create a scalable solution for MSPs using tools such as Nerdio, which makes it easy to set up Azure for SMBs and beyond, and Crayon, which enables organizations to optimize their cloud environments and get the most bang for their buck.
Learn more about The 20 — who we are and how we’ve helped hundreds of MSPs get to the top of the IT industry.