Everyone wants to be in the Cloud, and why wouldn’t they? Cloud-based services are easy to manage because they are scalable, accessible from anywhere, and amortise costs thoroughly monthly or annual subscriptions.

Maybe you’re already in the Cloud, and wondering if you’ve made the right selection of vendor? Or you are just exploring the Cloud and feeling overwhelmed by the saturated market of vendors. Who should you choose and why?

This webinar breaks down the differences between the types of Cloud offerings to ensure you choose the service that is right for your business.

It goes over:

• Software as a Service (SaaS) VS Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) • How to determine whether you should use a Public Vs Private Cloud • The pro’s + con’s of notable vendors • Important things to consider e.g. ongoing support and exit strategies

About the speaker: Rob has more than ten years experience IT systems and strategy, and has seen both the best and the worst of cloud solutions and implementations.

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Video Transcript

Good morning to those of you who have joined us for this morning session. Which cloud service is right for your business? And to those who are watching the recordings or even able to? Join us this morning, uhm? Let’s get into it. So, uh, basically today’s session is going to cover the cloud. So when we say cloud, what do we mean? Failed solutions as a service? So I’m sure that most of you will have heard of things as a service. It seems to be the new way to bundle or productize services and solutions that are particularly delivered via the cloud. So everything as a service which is right for you. So determining the. Infrastructure that’s sort of. Write your business so there’s a couple of different types of cloud solutions. Which one is going to be right for you in the context of your business and what you do know some context and consideration. So keep factors for critical decision making. This is one of the things that I think tends to get overlooked a little bit. Everybody goes, you know, I want to be in the cloud. I want to be in the cloud and someone will will come and go. Oh hey, I’ve got this amazing cloud thing, you know just just come straight to us and they go. OK, well that sounds appealing without considering some of the. Important things about you know what that’s gonna look like long term, particularly, and in strategy and execution. So aligning the cloud service that you choose to move to. Or you know a mix of cloud services or solutions that you choose to move to and how well that actually aligns to both your immediate and you’re particularly medium term strategy. What’s the business going to look like in? You know one or 12 months or three years? And there’s that cloud service going to facilitate or remove barriers to achieving those. Strategic objectives over that period of time. So that’s critically important as well. So who does this webinar apply to? UM, obviously those wanting to move to the cloud. So if you do still have an infrastructure on premises you’re still using on premises applications, this is very, very applicable to you. Those already using cloud services, so this might come as a bit of a surprise, but uhm, there’s people who are already in the cloud and they’re already consuming services from the cloud or as a service, and they’re finding themselves struggling with, you know systems. And where to go? And is this the right thing for me? And it doesn’t feel any better than when I had things on premises and not some feedback we we get by often that you know people move stuff to the cloud and it doesn’t seem to be simpler or easier for anybody. And they don’t quite understand why that’s the case when other people are getting such good reward for moving to the cloud. Invalidate they’ve made the right choices about their their provider, so of course we’d love to be the provider of your cloud services. But the reality is that it’s nice to get some validation that you’ve made good decisions along the way as well, and those who have doubts about the advantages of cloud. So me personally, I’m a big advocate for cloud on premises infrastructure. It just breaks. It just breaks and there’s business interruption and there’s zero scalability in. What you do, and there’s large capital outlay and a whole bunch of things that, uhm, you know really aren’t well aligned to the way that most people do. Business, particularly professional services spikes. So yeah, there’s some. You know, some real distinct advantages to using cloud systems had always stick around to the end. If you have any questions, will stop recording and you can ask those questions at the end. So when we say cloud, what do we actually mean? So today’s session is going to cover a couple of different types of cloud solutions, and everywhere that you see IIS, we’re talking about as a service. And because we’re in it, we obviously make an acronym for everything. So we’ll go through what some of those acronyms are and what they mean. So the first one is that we can see there is on site. So when you are on site, what do you actually have to manage so your applications and data? We’re talking about runtime and middleware. It’s how your applications are actually run or delivered. So if you’re using a piece of software, how does that actually run the operating systems virtualization? So virtualization refers to when you have a physical server and you have multiple virtualized servers sitting on top of them. That’s what we’re talking about with virtualization servers in terms of physical hardware storage. In terms of physical hardware and networking, there is a lot of stuff to manage. And as I, uh, you know historically and IT services provider, we’re still at IT services provider. But when stuff is on site, there’s a lot to manage. And when it says you manage what it actually means is your IT provider will manage all of these things for you. And obviously the disadvantage to that is it’s very expensive because there’s lots of work to be done and it’s just for you as well, so you know if we do work on your on site infrastructure, nobody else is going to get the advantage of that. So you know when we start moving things to cloud, if we apply a patch or we do some maintenance against one thing, a whole bunch of people will get the benefit of it. So that’s when, particularly when we’re moving to software as a service, so we’ll get up to their per second. The second one is infrastructure as a service, so that’s the I AA S is referring to infrastructure. Now when we talk about infrastructure, what are we referring to? So infrastructure is as we can see from the list down the bottom there we can see that it’s networking storage servers and virtualization. So when you have infrastructure as a service, it’s essentially putting your hardware part of your network into the cloud and consuming those compute resources. So it’s the ability to have essentially virtual hardware available to you that you can consume as a service. It’s scalable, so on demand you only pay for what you use, and it’s a vendor managed as well. So what do you need to bring to the table to consume infrastructure as a service? You need to bring their operating systems, and when we say operating systems we’re talking about. You know Windows or Linux if you’re that way inclined, and installing your licensing and setting up your servers and systems on top of that infrastructure middleware so your applications integrations your runtime. So how those applications are consumed? So when we talk about runtime, we’re talking about a computer, it’s ability to run that piece of software, your data and application, so you will bring all of that to the table and set it on top of that, and consume the essentially. Hardware hosted in the cloud on infrastructure as a service. The next one, PWS, is platform as a service. So in platform as a service it will actually do provide you with your operating systems. Your middleware in your runtime and all you need to bring is your applications and data and drop it on top so we’ll go through some examples of what that actually is so that we can sort of relate that to something. Some things that are very well known. But basically you just bring your applications and data, you drop it on top of platform as a service and then you can essentially log into that and consume your applications and data. The next one in the list is software as a service and that is where you will just basically log into something that’s online. Everything is managed by the vendor. And it’s very, very simple. Too often to sign up and to consume. And uhm, yeah, there’s essentially no management overhead from an IT management perspective, which is really important to know. Interestingly, when we’ll be talking about this a lot moving forward, he is as you go from on site through to Sass. The requirement from an IT services provider. So people like us becomes less and less and less and less, so there’s less to manage. When you’re on site, we have to manage all of that stuff on side. When you’re an infrastructure as a service, there’s only a few things that we need to manage. When you’re in platform as a service, again, it becomes even less so. We’ve just data and applications. We only need to worry about things like cyber security and backups. And then once you’re in software as a service, it’s it’s literally coming back to zero, so you know we might look after endpoint devices, so how you actually connect to it? Better cybersecurity, better backup, come from those SAS applications, but more commonly will start changing the. Conversation away from how do we manage our infrastructure to how do we maximize what you’re getting out of what you’re paying for? So I’m talking about the strategy, how you can automate things, how we can assist in delivering those applications better, we might manage assets, and asset lifecycles for endpoint devices, but at the end of the day, the demand is just becoming less and less and less from an IT services provider perspective. So something to keep in the back of your mind when you’re considering which one you’re going to move forward with. So, so far as a service is a software licensing and delivery model, UM, which is on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. Interestingly, was formally referred to from Microsoft as software plus services. Interesting that you know, sort of things tend to progress, and I assume that marketing teams that I’ve got Sky here with me today, marketing teams get ahold of it and I work out how to actually package that up into something that makes sense. So software as a service is pretty good. It doesn’t require any infrastructure to use it, and basically just get a computer you connect up to it and everything sort of managed by the vendor. All you need to do is essentially consume it, put your data into it. Do your transactions there and get your daughter out of it. So very, very simple. Some examples of it so Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are some examples of that. Salesforce, Canva at zero, or some other really good ones, and they’re basically and I know that we actually have our friends from netdocuments here today as well, so net documents from my legal customers and people who work in the legal sector is a document management system that’s purely cloud hosted as well. Now, the examples that we’re looking here at the minute these are cloud native applications. So this is very important to know and will go a little bit further into that as we go through. But these aren’t just bits of software that are just wedged into infrastructure or platform as a service for you to consume. These are built in the cloud. That’s how they were designed and delivered through to you. So you just access them via web browser. It will they will be multi tenanted so there will be lots of users and users consuming the same essentially infrastructure or are looking at that old charts. Essentially the same infrastructure. Where you just have your space or your tenant that sits on top of that and you’ll consume that from your end point device. So these are some really well known ones. There’s heaps of others out there. But that is an example of software as a service. The platform as a service is basically a vendor managed hardware, so infrastructure as a service, but on top of that they put on top the operating systems and the network and the databases and all those types of things that you need to just put your applications on top of that. So if you’re running on premises applications at the moment and I’m sure there’s still plenty of people that are asked or running on premises applications if you’re running on premises applications and you needed to move them to cloud. Platform as a service will give you the ability to just bring your applications and data, set them on top of that infrastructure so it will obviously need to be built out or tailored to your requirements, but you can just bring your applications and data, dump it on top of that and start consuming it. So platform as a service is very good, it just gives you what you would have in your on premises network. It basically moves that to the cloud so that you can essentially consume it as a cloud service, which is really good if you have so we’d call them legacy applications. Anything that sits on premises. But the other thing that platform as a service is used for is. There’s plenty of providers out there that are saying that they have cloud applications and what they’re doing is they’re using platform as a service and just dumping on premises applications on top of a platform as a service and asking you to come to them to consume their application from their platform. So that’s another way that people are saying so when you hear hosted software. That’s what they’re talking about. And when you hear Cloud native, so some of the things that we spoke about before and the likes of netdocuments, for example. When they’re talking about cloud native, it’s been developed in the cloud to be delivered via a web browser over the Internet purely you can’t actually install that as a server on premises. You can only consume in via their by their cloud over the Internet, so that’s cloud native and then hosted will have applications sitting on top of platform as a service, but platform as a service is something that you can buy and consume as well, so you can consume that directly. You bring your own applications and data, you build your own network, and there was obviously. Obviously some distinct advantages to doing that, because you can bring your entire application stack sitting on top and your data center, and you have complete control over that environment as well, so it gives you the flexibility around what you do with your backups, who you do and don’t give access to the integrations between your applications, so if you have a diverse application stack, it will give you the flexibility to obviously integrate bits and pieces of software into other bits and pieces of software that sit in that stack. So there are some distinct advantages there. Some examples of platform as a service, so we’ve all heard of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. I call it Azure. I do realize that it is Azure, as all of my American friends keep telling me, but because I’m very very Australian, I pronounce it Azure. So what can you get or what can you consume through those services? So for Amazon Web Services it’s actually Amazon Elastic Beanstalk love, Amazon, and they’re funny names, but Elastic Beanstalk is referring to the ability to. Especially having Beanstalk that will grow and you can add in bits and pieces that you need and through Microsoft Azure AD so you can do and you can do the same with Amazon Web Services, manage desktops, managed servers, managed network. So basically all of that infrastructure that you need just bring your data and applications, drop it on top of that and you will have the ability to consume it. So some really cool stuff there from Amazon and Microsoft. There are a few others we’re looking specifically at. Public cloud as opposed to private cloud I’m I’m not a mega fan of Private Cloud will get into that a little bit later on. I think public cloud is perfectly fine for 99% of SME’s and unless you have a very very very specific requirement that will require some management overhead from an IT services provider. So the next one is infrastructure as a service and as we said, it’s basically online hardware, so server computing resources made available to be consumed over the Internet. Oh, I see that my slide is missing half the information there, so it’s probably a mistake on my part not filling that in, but what does it normally include? So it will be the equivalent of your network infrastructure. So switches and bits and pieces, so you’ll be provided with a virtual network. The hardware that you need, or the equivalent of hardware we virtualized hardware, so the hardware that you will need to put yourself on what you need to bring to the table is you need to bring your operating systems, your data and applications, and there’s obviously a fair bit of management involved as well, so you need to bring all of the licensing for all of you. Writing systems you’ll need to build that on top of that, so it’s essentially a clean slate. It’s essentially a foundation, and you will need to build everything out. On top of that, so that’s something that will normally be undertaken by a nighty services provider or an internal IT manager. If you’re big enough to unfortunate enough to have an internal IT manager that’s technical enough to do that, but basically you can bring all of that and wedging and up there. The advantages of something like infrastructure as a service is if you have. If you were quite a large enterprise, there’s some really good stuff that you can get. Uhm, you know. Particularly from Microsoft in terms of their operating systems and what you can do on their enterprise level licensing, you can have access to a whole bunch of different servers, server licensing and software licensing to sit on top of that. And if you’re managing all of your own infrastructure, there are some advantages and some reasons why you might want to use that. There may be some constraints for you as well around where you keep and store your information or where you keep in store your data. Very, very rare. I think particularly of more so for most SME’s. That is never going to be a requirement that is going to sort of force your hand to move into something like infrastructure as a service, but it is a service that is there. So some examples again will say Amazon Web Services, so a WS does provide a pure infrastructure as a service and you can bring your own operating systems and licensing and your runtimes in your middleware and essentially build it out. On top of that, Rackspace is another one that’s been around for a long time. It’s very well known I think, maybe more so in the IT sector, but they sort of started out that you could send your on premises server and wedge it into their data center, but now they essentially provide that data center foundation and. You can build stuff on top of that by bringing your operating systems and all of your applications and data to put on top of that infrastructure. So the next thing is which one is right for you. So I have my personal opinions about all this. Simply because I’ve lived in a pure sass environments for many nearly ten years, but which is the right thing for your business? The The thing is, it depends, right? So it depends on where you’re at the moment where you’re moving to what your objectives are, so pure. Sass is brilliant. This is how we operate. So to give you an idea of what pure Sass looks like and what the mix is. So we have our surface. So we have our Microsoft Surface. And then I use Microsoft 365, which is my mail, my data storage. All of our information sits there. We use Microsoft Dynamics which is cloud hosted, so dynamics 365 that is our CRM, our projects platform, our cases and ticket management. So all of our OPS get done from there and zero. You know we love 0 so I actually don’t have any server infrastructure to manage and if an IT company is doing it, it’s a fair indicator that its. Probably the right way to go, but that’s something that works for us and not everyone is as fortunate as we are to be able to just quickly change their systems over to something else, which is something that, funnily enough we’ve done recently, is changed all of our systems over 2 dynamics, so we’re agile enough and probably technically competent enough to be able to do that, but that’s the way that we’ve chosen to go, so I like pure sass, and I think if you were a startup and you didn’t have any legacy infrastructure. That is the way that you would go. So if you came to me as a start up and said oh hey Rob, I need to set up some systems. What do you suggest that I do? I would tell you to go down the pure South pathway purely because of that lack of management overhead. And yeah, basically you would just push everything into cloud applications and have your endpoint device and if anything died all your data in the cloud and we can do cloud the cloud backups as well so you just don’t have to worry about any of that so. My recommendation for any startups who don’t have any legacy infrastructure is look at pure Sass and if you do have legacy infrastructure that you’re looking to move away from transitioning across to a pure sass environment, personally I think would be the right way to go, assuming that you obviously choose the right applications to work with. More on that a little bit later, pure platform as a service is another good option, so if you do have legacy applications that you can’t just move away from going to. Platform as a service is probably going to be the right thing for you. There’s there are some other advantages to platform as a service as well in terms of control and who does and does not have access to your information, so you can lock that stuff right down. But if you have legacy applications and you need on premises infrastructure to essentially consume those applications, all that data platform as a service is great because you can essentially pick up those applications, drop them up there, get rid of everything that you have on premises and just use your endpoint devices the same way that we do the way that you would connect to it. ‘cause you obviously need to have a some form of managed desktop or a terminal server to be able to access the information, but it will be the same as remoting into your own network that you have on premises. Now it will just be via Gigabit pipes into some of those big particularly public cloud solution providers so that you can essentially access all of that stuff and the likelihood that that’s ever going to go down is almost zero. So it is a pretty good pathway there. If you do have legacy applications that you need moved out there, so that’s particularly where you have a server client happening, so you have a database and you have your application on a server and your client computers connect to that device to move that the server and the client part being the manage desktop that you have from the cloud so that you can consume that. Managed infrastructure as a service. It’s it’s a difficult one. As I said, if you’re a bigger enterprise and you have access to lots of licensing and you need to be able to build out your own staff, you have lots of internal capability to manage that. It’s potentially going to be the right thing for you. So the other thing is if you have applications, particularly in this is in the legacy stuff. If you have applications that sit on a particular operating system that a platform as a service provider can’t make available to you using infrastructure as a service might be the right choice, because you can essentially pick up that server, wedge it into infrastructure as a service so that you can consume their hardware or so on. Highly redundant, highly scalable platforms. But then you’ll be able to move your legacy stuff over there, so that might be another reason you might move to. Managed infrastructure as a service, and then there’s obviously hybrid as well, so hybrid is good for I think, particularly for platform as a service and software as a service. If you are a departmentalized organization and you only have a small portion of your organization which needs to use legacy applications or something via platform as a service, but the rest of the organization can use pure sass, that’s a good pathway. That’s a good pathway to go down. Or having a mix of the two so even people who are in pure platform. As a service will still most commonly have some form of software as a service, so as an example, if you were in using Azure managed desktop, so this is something that we sell a fair bit of. If you’re in Microsoft Azure managed desktops and you have an Azure platform as a service, so you have your infrastructure in Azure, you will still have, for example Microsoft 365 or Office 365 as it used to be known. You’ll still have those licenses to deliver your your office licenses, but you can access your emails you can. Access your daughter in bits and pieces. You can access those directly from Microsoft without going through the platform, so if you need to split the business and only have certain users in the business go via platform, then you would have the ability to do that. So that’s where you would see some of that hybrid stuff. And in some instances there’s still requirement to have things on premises. So for print applications for example, so you might have cost recovery applications you might have. Something you’re doing with your phone system? There might still be a requirement for on premises infrastructure, so you might have a mix of in the hybrid environment, maybe some sass, some platform as a service and still have some on premises infrastructure to manage. Some of those things that are happening there. Security systems are another one. They might have some on premises infrastructure for. So what’s good and what’s not a? This is obviously my my personal opinion, and I think probably our positioning at Murtic reflects that as well. The merchant group soaring reflects that as well, so for software as a service platform over products so. When, uh, when mobile phones come out and the ability to put apps on mobile phones, this interesting thing happened in the IT industry, particularly people who sell IT solutions and services. And at the time I was providing process automation and integration systems. You know when this all sort of became really big, everyone went. I’d come in and you know, I’d put a proposal in front of somebody and go. You know this is the thing that that you need. You know, as an enterprise wide solution so that everyone can come onto and consume that. Platform and essentially you can build out things on top of that and there are some you know really good advantages to doing that because you don’t need to train people. The licensing is really easy, bringing users in and now the business is really easy. Backing it up is really easy. All of those things come into play and it’s all really well integrated ‘cause it’s only one system, so that’s a platform. But the app thing happened, and every time I go to somebody with a proposal for a platform, they go. Oh well, I can just download an app to my phone and do that. I go. OK, awesome, well you do that. You let me know how it goes for you. And then I do another app into another app and do another app, and then I’d, you know, come back crying to me. You know two years later and go, oh, you know all of my data is all over the place and I don’t know where it is and nothing is talking to one another. And what was that thing that you were talking about two years ago? The thing that you should have got absolutely so we always say platform over product. So look at it strategically. You put apps, data ends up in silos. It ends up all over the Internet all over the place. You don’t know where things are. You have user accounts for each of them. It’s just a mess. It’s just a nightmare. Look at a highly or tightly integrated platforms that integrate into systems that you have, so we do lots of 365, so Microsoft 365, Office 365. It’s a platform, there’s the ability to do lots of different things within that platform. Netdocuments is something else that we do tightly integrate to practice management systems in the legal space to do all of the document management. It’s another thing that’s a great platform, has the ability to be built out to cover the entirety of the business, to have everybody. In that one system. So I’m a firm believer in platforms over products, so as appealing as some of those products might look all those apps that you can just go by, you know going consume on the Internet and you sign up for free and you get 3 months free. It’ll just be a nightmare for you down the track and I’m just speaking from experience. I’ve seen it over and over again, so something to keep in mind related to infrastructure or platform as a service. I always say public over private. And the reason I say that. Tom, you know, I know that there’s plenty of places out there that, UM, provide private clouds and you have a private link into a private cloud. And that’s their thing that they do come. I actually just don’t see the customer value in that, particularly when comparing it to the likes of a Microsoft or an Amazon who spend billions of dollars on their data centers. They have unlimited band, almost unlimited bandwidth across their pipes coming into those, they have clusters of services servers distributed all over the world. Uhm, and accountability. They’ve got millions of users on platform. They have the responsibility to keep that platform up all the time and and it’s you know. And I don’t want to offend anybody, but it’s not a bunch of hacks. Just putting together a a data center. You know, these are the the most highly skilled people in the industry are building out these data centers in public. And one of the other distinct advantages to having public over private is that essentially not entrusting your data to A to a single vendor or a single provider. Public clouds, right? Because if you come to me and say, oh hey, Rob, I want to move all of my stuff into into Azure on and move it into Amazon Web service. And I go cool. Yep, well, we can do that. We said all of that infrastructure up for you and then you go. You know what? Rob, I don’t like you and I would like to find somebody else to manage this. It’s so simple. All you do is go hey Rob, we don’t want you anymore. We want these guys to manage it because they know how to. So you’ll be able to find you know will be a diamond. Doesn’t that we? 50 other providers within 50 kilometres of where we are? Will be able to manage that infrastructure on public cloud because it’s accessible and there’s so much training and support availability. UM, you know, you’ll just be able to move and you’ll just switch your billing partner. And essentially you’ll just keep working so you know. Personally, for me, I think public cloud is is the way to go, just in terms of you know the the investment not being locked in and you know just the knowledge you know, broader knowledge of how to manage those those systems I think is particularly important, so they’re the two things. Really, from my perspective that I would look for, I’d be looking for platform over products, and if you’re looking at infrastructure platform as a service, I’ll be looking at public over private just so you don’t run into any constraints or any barriers or having your data locked by by a vendor or access blocked you know over whatever it happens to be, might be billing dispute to something. Let’s hope not. So yeah, that’s just my opinion. I think the motec group you know we would be reflective of that as well. And what we talk about and what we do. That’s the type of services that we provide and something that I think you should think about. If you’re looking at moving to something or looking at potentially moving away from something. So we’ll come back to the context and consideration. So startups versus established businesses, and I think I spoke about it before. If you were a startup, just go to Sass, you know, find Cloud native platforms to set up and run your business from. You’ll thank me later. If you’re an established business and you have legacy systems that might not be a reality for you, might you might not be able to do it. So the longer that you’ve been in business, the more likely it is that you will have legacy systems that you will need to hang onto it, just it is what it is. It’s the nature of the beast, so if you are an established business, probably platform as a service, so still just removing the, I’d say the overhead. As minimal as possible, so moving into something like platform as a service where that infrastructure is essentially managed for you and you can just consume it because that’s what you want, right? You just want it to work. You want it to be fast, you want it to be scalable. You know something like that formed as a service is going to be really good. Costs capital and recurring, so obviously moving all of yourself into cloud systems. There will be a capital component, but the capital component in terms of the costs is not going to be. Here is an asset that you can have to replace in three years time you know those capital costs are just going to be the professional services essentially can move all of that stuff in there other costs or the indirect costs you might experience is business interruption. Other interruptions might be some business interruption. You know there might be some training overhead as well. I’m like I’m into that. Moving people into new systems, but once you’re in the cloud, anything as a service has a recurring costs often associated with it. So it might be monthly or annually, so all that that capital infrastructure costs that you would have for having particularly hardware bits and pieces on premises will obviously be strung out or amortized over a greater period of time, and you’ll have those recurring processing place instead. Compliance and information management. So in terms of the compliance side, there are some rules around. You know things, things like data sovereignty. Where are you allowed to have your information stored? Depending on what type of information you have in that type of business you are, there may be some limitations around that on the information management side. Where are you putting all of those bits and pieces? And again this comes back to having different apps and app silos. The ability to manage that information more broadly across a whole bunch of different applications in a different application stack is a nightmare as opposed to having it all consolidated. So on system security who’s who has access to what where all of that data is being included in backup and disaster recovery sets all of those things are some things to think about. Size, sites, constraints, and strategic goals. So this is another really important one. If you’re a, you know a really small business and you’re a startup. The ability to move and change like we have your very agile, the ability to move and change is super simple, right? So if you’re a smaller business, this will be easier for you to do it for you to be able to attain. If you’re a bigger business, there’s obviously a lot more that needs to go into it, and we do appreciate that it’s not just a matter of just flipping a switch, and everybody will will move over. You need the the change management process. You obviously need to get people trained up and you need to make sure that that’s aligned to your strategic objectives as well long-term, because you’re just not as not as agile as potentially a smaller business. If you have multiple sites, this is another good reason to go. If you have multiple sites just being able to consolidate all that data back into a central location. And provision access from each of those sites or users. Or now everybody is working from from home, sending lockdowns again. Uhm, you know, having that that distributed environment so we call remote endpoint management where basically you can just open your computer from wherever you are and just be able to access all your stuff. It’s awesome. Honestly, it’s just really removes any barriers to being able to do what I need to do to fulfill the filter function of my role here at the Merc tech group, and I suspect it would be the same for you if you were to move. So pure cloud services as well. What are some of the constraints so some capacity and capability internally, particularly resources or personnel? You know, you might have some constraints there. It might be budgetary, it might be some other things that are going on some other projects that you have running, so consider the constraints you know what might limit you from being able to move to other particular systems, and that might be regular regulatory compliance as well. Maybe another constraint that you might run into. And what your strategic goals are? You know where you want to be and what do you want to be doing? Are you building the business to sell your building the business to grow up? Are you just trying to maintain balance and have some cost control? You know, work out what those strategic goals are and make sure you align that that plan or that that move how you’re going to get into the cloud. Make sure that’s well aligned to what your strategic goals are, and some other one other thing that often never gets spoken about is an exit strategy. So if you move into a cloud system. And you hate it, what’s your exit strategy? What does that look like? And I know that there’s some, you know, some really good operators that I’ve worked with over the years. They go into it with an exit strategy not to ever exercise that, UM. But just in case you know from a risk management or risk mitigation POV, UM, you know, it’s essentially their entire business is being wedged into a system that they have no control over. What’s your exit strategy are going to be able to get your data out? Are you going to be able to get your documents out all of that critical information? What’s going to happen if you ever need to move away from that something just to keep in the back of your mind? So in the strategy and execution phase, aligning with your business plan. Brought in a Technology Strategy, UM and setting timelines, allocating budget and starting the process just critically important. As with any project, as with anything that you do in terms of writing, a strap plan and then or a business plan and then moving forward into the execution phase of that and and just defining, working out your ability to execute as well is really important. And bringing in the right people to the right resources, both from a capability and a capacity perspective. To be able to facilitate and essentially execute to make sure that it gets done is going to be critically important for you. And that wraps up for today. Our next webinar, we haven’t decided what it’s going to be yet. Uhm, there’s some stuff coming out on Windows 11 that we thought might be interesting to have a look at so, but keep it on our socials for the official announcement and registration link. And if you do need to contact us if you are looking to move to cloud or if there is something that we can help you with along that journey, feel free to reach out to us. Contact details there. And if you don’t follow us on socials, please do. It would be appreciated.