Author: Howard M. Cohen
Have you ever had a customer ask where you, as their CSP, fit into their Azure solution?
They’re thrilled to me moving their workloads to the cloud. No more servers to manage, no more storage. So many expenses and capital investments gone! And now Azure will manage itself and keep everything secure all by itself. Right?
Wrong.
Microsoft makes tremendous effort to assure that customers know they are entering into a “shared responsibility” model.
Microsoft Responsibilities
Azure is a cloud services platform that offers a tremendous scope and variety of services. Compute services, storage services, security services, automation services, and much more. Most fundamentally, Azure provides the core services of the physical hosts that run the virtual machines, the physical network everything communicates over, and the physical plant of the many global datacenters in which all these services operate.
Shared Responsibilities
The places in which your customers share responsibility with Microsoft depend upon whether they are using Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), or Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).
For example, if they’re using Azure for SaaS or PaaS, your customer and Microsoft will share responsibility for the identity and directory infrastructure.
In PaaS implementations Microsoft will also share responsibility for the network controls and applications with your customer.
Your Customer’s Responsibilities
More responsibility shifts to your customer when they’re using Azure IaaS services. They own responsibility for the identity and directory infrastructure, the operating systems, network controls, and all the applications.
Whether they’re using SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS Azure services, there are several resources that must be managed by the customer. These include all accounts and all identities, management and security of all mobile and desktop devices, all information, and all data.
By contrast, in an on-premises setting the customer owned responsibility for managing everything.
Your Responsibilities and Your Opportunities
It is altogether likely that your customer is not prepared to execute on any of their responsibilities in this shared responsibilities model. That’s not what they do for a living, and that’s why they’ve turned to you for assistance with their IT requirements.
Now, it is also altogether likely your customers will need your help handling their shared responsibilities.
This creates an excellent opportunity for you to deepen your relationships with your customers and become even more of a key resource and business partner with them.
What if You’re Not Prepared to Do That?
Turn to Idenxt. Created and operated by extensively experienced Microsoft experts, the automation tools provided by Idenxt coupled with all that human expertise are uniquely qualified to help your customers keep up their end of the shared responsibilities model.
From maintaining constant visibility of all information, data, devices, accounts, and identities, to managing the operating systems, network controls, applications and directory infrastructure in IaaS applications, Idenxt automates core processes and leverages the expertise of the Idenxt when human intervention is required.
Most important: Your customer never needs to know you’re partnering with Idenxt to help them fulfill their shared responsibilities. Idenxt becomes your Azure management and security platform, expanding and extending your role with your customers without requiring additional staff or training.
Now you can grow your deal size and significantly increase your customer lifetime value, all without lifting a finger.
For more information about putting Idenxt to work for you and your customers, contact us here.