Portions of Microsoft’s Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online suffered a five-hour outage today. Microsoft says a networking issue — rather than a true cloud outage — impacted some North America cloud customers. Either way I was left wondering: Are customers and MSPs essentially helpless when Microsoft’s cloud can’t deliver applications?
I’m reminded of my days as an IBM intern in 1992. Working at IBM’s Poughkeepsie, N.Y., mainframe plant, there were a few times when the central mainframe went down. Suddenly, all productivity stopped. Hundreds of employees headed out the front door get a nicotine fix. Hundreds more headed to the cafeteria for a coffee break. We were all helpless without that mainframe.
And so, it’s sort of back to the future with cloud computing. Generally speaking I think cloud applications are incredibly reliable. And in many cases, cloud applications are more reliable than their on-premise counterparts. No doubt, thousands of PCs fail across the world every day. But we only here about a few cloud outages per month.
Still, back to my original question: Are customers and MSPs helpless when a big public cloud like Office 365 goes dark or suffers a network issue? I realize companies like Level Platforms allow you to monitor Microsoft’s cloud. And other companies like Nimsoft allow you to monitor complex cloud datacenters running Vblock.
But what can you possibly do when a big partner like Microsoft Office 365 fails? Are there any potential workarounds to help keep your customers productive until Microsoft brings its cloud systems back online?
Those questions — and more — came to mind today when I heard some North America customers were experiencing major Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online issues. During the five-hour outage were partners essentially helpless as their customers went dark? Do MSPs have any recourse?
Long-term, I know technologies like CA’s WatchMouse could help MSPs monitor and enforce cloud SLAs (service level agreements). But right here, right now I wonder if partners felt helpless.
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Posted In: Cloud Computing | North America | Partner Program | Service Level Agreements
Tags: Cloud Failure | Cloud Outage | Cloud Service Level Agreements | Cloud SLAs | Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online | Microsoft Office 365 | Office 365 Failure | Office 365 Outage
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Take a look at our 
That is why a hybrid model is best of both worlds,that way smb clients aren’t dead in the water.
wk: I certainly hear a lot about hybrid cloud. But…
1. Is there a way to coordinate hybrid cloud with Office 365?
2. Or are you making more of a generic statement, indicating that customers can choose some other cloud email system, CRM and content sharing system that has hybrid capabilities?
-jp
I believe its all about expectations upfront. Let your client know that if their cloud service goes down you wont be able to fix it yourself. You will be on the phone with a huge call center – and will be at their mercy until it is back up. They’ll either be fine with it or willing to pay more to have it on premise or on your own private cloud – in which there is more accountability and visibility into the problem and the time to be resolved.
Gerson,
I like your approach. In your personal experience are you shifting any customers out to third-party public clouds (Office 365, Google Apps, Amazon, etc.); building your own cloud; or keeping customers on premise? Any change of heart given recent public cloud outages?
-jp
Joe,
You make a lot of great points that I use to reiterate to a lot of clients that called in inquiring about cloud services. I use to work for a cloud provider and the reason I was able to close customers beyond the support and all inclusive package they offer is the accountability for any downtime that is experienced. Many are quick to jump to Microsoft’s side due to the brand loyalty or just the brand recognition. Unfortunately, that alone does not ensure your clients up-time or sense of relief when things go sour as they did yesterday. To my knowledge they did not reach out to clients to explain what troubles they faced and apologize for any lost time/productivity of their business. My emphasis here is they really have lost touch or appreciation of their customer base when things go array. Recently, another Cloud Provider faced some trouble but stood behind their customers/clientele and provided up to date status on the issue and followed up with a webinar and calls. This is taking accountability and letting your clients know that this issue will be rectified. Essentially not leaving their clients helpless and bringing them up to speed.
Anthony F,
Indeed, over-communication and accountability are critical during and after an outage. I think the cloud giants (MSFT, AMZN, etc.) have a real challenge because they’re trying to serve and communicate to the masses — so that can lead to impersonal communications.
But I don’t want to sound negative. I do believe in the long-term Office 365 strategy. I just wonder if MSFT will wind up alienating a few partners along the way, given all the previous BPOS problems and now yesterday’s Office 365/Dynamics CRM glitch.
-jp
The MSPs responsibility is to ensure that the customer’s experience with their IT investments matches expectations, particularly if they sold or recommended it. Virtually all technology experience today is a function of many components all of which need to be working correctly.
Monitoring Office 365 and other cloud apps is essential for MSPs who think of their roles as managing the customer technology experience (as opposed to managing the performance of a piece of technology). That’s why we call them Managed Services Providers as opposed to Managed Technology Providers.
With this in mind here is why MSPs absolutely need to monitor the cloud.
1. The cloud service will sometimes go down as we just saw. Level Platforms Partners that sold or recommended the cloud service receive proactive alerts and can proactively handle customer communications delivering some level of peace of mind and accountability as well as in some cases workaround suggestions.
2. The customer comment “My email is not working” is more likely to be an internal networking or local device issue allowing the MSP to immediately diagnose the cause and remediate the issue rather than have the customer experience a frustrating cycle through the cloud providers first level support.
As cloud providers come to understand the value of MSPs in this regard they will begin to provide channel programs including direct access to second level support etc. as well as higher discounts. We are championing these MSP values with the cloud providers. In particular we are working with the cloud vendors to provide APIs etc. that allow this to be fully automated.
For a complete 15 minute video on RMM and the cloud please visit
http://www.levelplatforms.com/News_Events/Items/news_event08111101.aspx
Peter
http://www.levelplatforms.com
In answer to your question Joe – we run our private clouds at the client’s premise. Simply put – we can’t run everything in the cloud. Legacy Line of Business apps – large files – expensive, unreliable and slow internet service (at least in Manhattan) are still barriers to running a significant portion of the client’s envrironment in the cloud. As long as we need to keep one or two Windows Instances running on the clients LAN it will continue to make financial sense to run everything on the LAN – and have the cloud only for Backup and DR.
We’ve had clients ask to be “in the cloud” but once we explain the pros and cons they completely cede to us to guide them which is best for them and we continue to go local with our on premise cloud.
I let our clients know if there are ever any problems – you’ll have a face and name you know taking care of everything. That’s invaluable to them.
Peter@7: Thanks for further clarifying Level Platforms’ cloud monitoring strategy. I know we’ve had some healthy debates in this area. But your message about “setting expectations” with end-customers is starting to resonate with me. A few people offered that same guidance in the comment trail above; it’s good advice.
Gerson@8: Thanks for looping back into the conversation. I wonder how many MSPs are prepared to have that cloud “pros and cons” conversation with customers? That conversation is typically a great deal generator, I believe…
-jp