eFolder partner Erik Thorsell explores the reasons to aggressively upgrade your BDR installed base. Erik shares essential learnings from his 18 month refresh of his entire client base.
2. Seven Great Reasons to Upgrade
Legacy BDRs Now
Ted Hulsy
VP of Marketing, eFolder
415-235-6087
ehulsy@efolder.net
Erik Thorsell
President, Success Computer Consulting
763-593-3000
erikt@sccnet.com
Before, SCC could not really confidently keep your promises. You were loosing sleep over the situation. There was no peace of mind. eFolder now helps you keep your promises to your clients.
Hello. My name is Ted Hulsy. I am Vice President of Marketing at eFolder and your host for today’s event.Welcome to the eFolder Partner Chats. This webinar series brings together leading eFolder partners for business oriented discussions.The topic for today is: Seven Great Reasons to Upgrade Legacy BDRs Now.Today we are joined by Erik Thorsell, President of Success Computer Consulting. In just a moment, I will further introduce Erik.
Before we go through the agenda, let’s cover a few house keeping items.Today’s session is being recorded. The recorded version of the webinar will be made available on eFolder’s YouTube channel. We will also make copies of the slides available those who attended the event.With over 100 people registered for today’s session, we have put all participants in listen only mode. You can enjoy the audio portion of today’s event by either streaming it your computer or by dialing in over the phone. Questions are strongly encouraged throughout today’s webinar. We have planned a special Q&A section at end of today’s discussion, but you may submit them as we go along and we will try to address your questions on the fly.First, Erik is going to give a good background on Success Computer Consulting and how they have successfully grown their BDR franchise over the past few years. Next, Erik is going to walk you through his experience of upgrading nearly 40 legacy BDRs to eFolder. He will share key insights he has gained along the way and his company has benefited from upgrading their client BDRs. And lastly, we will have plenty of time for your questions during the Q&A section.
Now let me introduce today’s guest:Erik Thorsell is founder and President of Success Computer Consulting. He started Success Computer Consulting in 1992 in a spare bedroom of his home. Originally serving large companies, Erik decided to shift his focus to small and medium-sized organizations. He knew that if he brought his corporate experience to these clients, he’d be able to develop a service offering that really made a noticeable difference to them. Today, more than eighteen years later, Success Computer Consulting's talented team is based at its Golden Valley, MN headquarters. SCC’s clients include small and medium-sized businesses, non-profit organizations, and educational institutions. Erik, thanks for joining us and welcome.
Story of my career – music education, Pillsbury Doughboy, American Express and SCC – no business being in I.T.Like many business owners, learn from my failures and mistakes – and if you’ve met me, you know I fail BIGTIME – so I don’t pretend to have “the secret” – but I hope that, by sharing, you might find a new way to think about backup/disaster recovery in your business.Although we have 35 people today, we only had 12 people six years ago – changed strategies and decided to grow in 2006 – HTG, vendor partners like eFolder, others helped us learn how – mostly, though, we had to just try thingsHTG focuses on execution and accountability. The HTG leadership quotes Thomas Edison – “Vision without execution is hallucination.” To me, it means my words are useless if I haven’t taken action. Constant challenge to me. And so, I want to begin by challenging you. If you hear an idea today about how you can build your BDR business or, better yet, if you think of a BETTER way than what you hear today, I challenge you to execute. Thinking about something is NOT execution. Deciding to do something in the future is NOT execution. You see, if you execute, than I can listen to YOUR story next, and find my own ideas to borrow!Our business shift – historically SBS boxes; last four years, decided to try to swim upstream a bit– to networks with 75 to 500 users; folks who have internal IT staff most oftenWe still get new small business clients, too – so we’re still in the trenches with products like SBSAnother shift – our managed service offering. Used to be a price-per-device “all you can eat” model – the traditional managed service pricing strategy. We failed. We weren’t profitable. Kept spending more time than we thought we would, and couldn’t get it under control. So, we switched models. As a result, our managed service offering (and it IS still managed service – we still are proactive, and our interests with clients are still aligned) is priced on an a la carte model. You’ll see why that matters in my upcoming slides.
The prior vendor simply did not perform as advertised – CA restore and it failed completely. eFolder is reliable, provides on-site recovery and multiple cloud based recovery options.
Prior solution had two models to choose from. There was no field upgradeability. Your only choice was a fork lift. eFolder provides choices to unique tailor solutions to client needs:Five models to choose fromEvery model can be customized with RAM and storage packsUnits can be field upgraded as client needs grow, allowing investment preservation and cost-effective upgradesOptions for Build Your Own BDR with eFolder Cloud for ShadowProtect – opportunity to use IBM hardware or other preferred vendor.
Before, with the prior vendor, it was an unending string of pricing surprises – software and wholesale monthly charges were always higher than advertised and filled with unpleasant surprises. eFolder makes it clear exactly what you pay for: appliance, software, BDR and cloud services with a fixed and variable component. Yes, it is a science and art forecasting client data growth, but your underlying wholesale costs are well understood.
Explain how you use the eFolder BDR Cost Wizard to forecast your wholesale costs and then your retail pricing.
Before, SCC could not really confidently keep your promises. You were loosing sleep over the situation. There was no peace of mind. eFolder now helps you keep your promises to your clients.
The first wave of BDR deployments had some false assumptions, namely, that hardware refreshes could be born exclusively by the service provider; client needs were generic, rather than specific and customized; and that hardware quality mattered little.None of that is true. Clients grow at different rates; clients come in all shapes and sizes; they have unique needs. Quality hardware is not free. BDR reliability requires not just quality software and quality cloud services, but quality hardware. The client needs the right hardware and should pay for it and own it. MSPs benefit little from having large amounts of depreciating assets on the books. Client ownership drives alignment of interest in quality over the long term.
Client pricing should simple to understand, but it should not shield or protect the large or faster growing clients from cost increases. The fast growing will consume more services over time and they must be ready to pay as they grow. There should not be any surprises, and there won’t be if expectations are set correctly.
Explore the SCC pricing approach. Wholesale costs x 3 = 66% gross margins, before add-on services which get you to 75% blended. Discuss how your model is changing: things that were a la carte, may become standard, but the price will need to go up to capture that value. Talk about the selling strategy of assessments / continuous assessments/QBRs with existing clients to first explore the vulnerabilities and costs of downtime… that creates the floor for a premium pricing discussion.
This diagram provides a simple overview of the main functions of an eFolder BDR for ShadowProtect installation.First, the ShadowProtect software running on the production servers captures an initial image of the server, along with incremental image backups, and stores them on the eFolder BDR.The eFolder BDR appliance acts both as a storage server and as a standby server, in the event the production server fails. The eFolder BDR, leveraging virtualization technology, can bring up the image of the downed server and operate just like production server. Since both the data and complete server configuration is backed up, this on-site recovery can happen in minutes, not hours or days.To deliver additional protection, eFolder backs up the server images daily to the eFolder Storage Cloud, providing cloud based protection from on-site disasters. The client or partner can recover the server images from the cloud, via a download or shipment of a hard drive with the server images.Or, partners may elect to recover the servers in the cloud with the eFolder Continuity Cloud. This approach provides the same benefits of on-site virtualization, but instead leverages the eFolder Continuity Cloud.
There are three components to the wholesale price of an eFolder BDR for ShadowProtect:- hardware - software- servicesThe eFolder BDR appliance runs from $1,749 to $7,899 depending on the model selected. Additional memory or storage models are options initially or after field deployment. eFolder supplies a license of StorageCraft ShadowProtect for each protected server. Most partners elect to pay for this license via the $20 per month fee. Alternatively, the license can be purchased outright for $575.eFolder BDR service is $40 per month, per BDR location. This monthly charge includes 150 GB of off-site cloud storage, software maintenance, and technical support. Additional charges may include additional cloud storage, billed by the GB. There is also an option for ShadowProtect licenses for desktops.
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If eFolder sounds right for you, contact us today. Qualifying VARs, solution providers, and MSPs can try any eFolder service at no cost.Thank you for joining us.