HITT- RapidScale's partnership with Google Cloud- Nov 26, 2024

In this HITT, RapidScale’s team, Koby Phillips of Telarus, and a guest discussed their new partnership with Google Cloud and its implications for cloud solutions. RapidScale, recognized for its engineering expertise and multiple cloud certifications, aims to leverage Google’s capabilities to enhance customer offerings, particularly in AI and data management. The conversation highlighted the importance of data readiness for AI discussions and the need for cost optimization in cloud migrations. RapidScale also emphasized their role in helping clients navigate contracting with Google to uncover potential savings. Overall, the partnership is positioned to empower advisors and clients in the mid-market sector with innovative cloud solutions.

Introduction to Telarus Tuesday Call

As we begin today’s Telarus Tuesday call with HITT training, it’s a revealing look into the latest in public cloud solutions, and specifically into the launch of RapidScale’s exciting new Google Cloud platform. RapidScale’s partnership with Google Cloud is gonna help you empower your business and your clients’ technology goals. So joining us today is Koby Phillips, Telarus VP of Cloud, along with his panel of experts from RapidScale, Anne Wheatley, the Google Alliance lead, and Michael Williams, cloud solution consultant. Koby and all, welcome to the Telarus Tuesday call.

Appreciate it. We actually have a third guest.

Sachin, if you wouldn’t mind dropping your your title and everything, that’d be great.

Yeah. Sorry for the last minute, addition here, but I’m really happy to be here. My name is Sachin Bansal. I lead the overall alliances team. So I my team manages Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. So we have a really great view across the industry on, what’s top of mind for customers and these partners. So thanks for having me.

And, also, let’s not go a second further without just recognizing how great of a pro of a headshot Michael has in this. That’s what I’ve ever seen.

Overview of RapidScale’s Partnership with Google Cloud

So with that, I think we’re all we’re all ready to begin. I know you guys have brought some some slides to kinda talk through and talk about this exciting announcement and venture that you guys are driving into. And, if you wanna go into the next one, I really just wanna kinda dote on the partnership to start it off and really, like, where we’re at with you guys as, you know, as a supplier relationship and what you guys are building out. Now, Sachin, you’ve mentioned AWS, Microsoft, Google now.

Not to mention, you know, the tradition we’ll call it the traditional rapid scale product mix of the private cloud, desktop as a service, you know, Mimecast on the email side for security and some of these other products. That acquisition a couple years ago, Logicworks and the expansion and the investment that you guys are all putting into it is very exciting. Today, we’re gonna really hone in on the Google partnership, but I really wanted to if you guys wanna touch on how empowering that is for for an advisor to bring an opportunity to rapid scale. And no matter which hyperscaler or sorry. Yeah. For cloud, no matter which hyperscaler it goes into, AWS, Azure, Google now, or private cloud, you guys are gonna be able to help source that and put those guys in the right position.

Understanding RapidScale’s Unique Positioning

That’s a hundred percent correct. I mean, we find it so powerful. And I think that, you know, you’ll hear walking the halls of rapid scale. Some people will refer to us as, like, sort of the mini GSI.

And it’s very unfair for the mid market customer and even the lower enterprise customer to only have a handful of choices, whether it’s Accenture or Wipro or, you know, name your big company who have to bring fifteen people to a single meeting. We believe we have full stack capabilities across every single sort of cloud deployment, you know, mechanism to help, our customers. And I think if you peel back even further, our reps are not incented to push technology in one direction or or or not. This is really an objective view on financial and commercial and technical merits as to which platform customers should use.

Our SAs, our sellers are all proficient across all these clouds and are able to intelligently articulate to a customer, hey. What are your pain points? What are you trying to accomplish and bring them onto the right platform? And it might be a hybrid approach as well.

Alright. So, guys, we are one and a half minutes into this conversation.

And the exact question I thought we were gonna ask right away just got asked by Tyler in the chat. We are gonna get into that, Tyler, about the competitive advantages of GCP versus, like, an Azure and AWS and where they all stack and rank. I know as a salesperson and just an, you know, in assisting advisers, we love to compare and understand how to give that insight to our to our our customers. And Anne and Michael in particular leading that Google Play And our prep calls and other conversations we have, they know this stuff inside out.

So we definitely gonna hit on that. If we wanna go to the next slide really quick, Chandler, I do wanna highlight this too. Rapiscale, you guys in twenty twenty four, based based on, like, some twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four, and the end of twenty twenty five, continue to invest in this partner community. It’s beat you guys are getting recognized across the industry.

So top engineering team that Michael’s a part of. Right? Top channel chief in Bobby Cannon, top national channel, national channel manager in Marin. And I guarantee you, if there’s an advisor on here that doesn’t know Marin, I’d be shocked.

She’s everywhere and she does a great job.

You guys are also, again, ninety two plus Google certifications. Now this is this is what you guys do when you when you lean into a relationship.

You know, Sachin just really quickly, and we’ll move right into Google, but just where are you guys at tier wise with Azure and AWS? Just so everybody understands.

Yeah. So we’re at the highest tiers of both, Amazon and Microsoft. So with AWS, we’re a premier partner. We have about eight different competencies spanning health care to DevOps, security, and and migration. With Microsoft, we’re one of, I think one hundred in the entire world that have the Azure expert MSP designation, which is a rigorous audit that Microsoft does to ensure that you know how to operate a customer’s cloud environment.

That audit from my talking to my CISO is harder than PCI, is harder than SOC two, is harder than HIPAA, And we’re a partner, that has, both on Amazon and and Azure.

Diving into Google Cloud’s Competitive Advantages

Fantastic. Alright. So AWS, Azure, top tier. Now let’s turn our attention to to Google and while we’re all here today to learn a little bit more about what impact this can have for advisors and their customers. So if you wanna slide over to that next slide, Chandler, and and, really, if you just set the table on what’s going on with Rapid Scale and the Google relationship, and then we’ll dive into those advantages that we that everybody’s wanting to hear about.

Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for having me. So, yeah, this is great. We, have heavily invested, into this partnership from not only engineering, data scientists, the whole gamut. It’s a whole operational back of the house, right, to manage from, you know, presales architects, the whole nine yards.

But this partnership is really heavily, not only heavily invested, but it’s it’s a true recognition from rapid scale that Google is yet, you know, the the last hyperscaler to market and yet it’s a very critical component, that has a lot of capabilities that are competitive, you know, if not leading in certain areas, to make it available to our customers.

Yeah. And what I love about the way that what I see customers figuring out over the last five, six, seven years, I just wanna back that down, five years. It doesn’t have to be just one. This is not what I like to call a high end situation. Right?

Getting to an organization like RapidScale who can utilize all three as well as private cloud and put you guys in put any customer in the most advantageous position for their workloads, applications, etcetera, data management, which is becoming more and more increasingly, important along with the the goal of what everybody’s wanting to talk about right now, AI. Right? So, Anne, yesterday, you took you away a little bit in some of the capabilities that Google’s doing on their AI platforms and things like that. Do you mind taking a couple minutes Sure. About that?

Exploring Google’s AI Capabilities

Yeah. No. It’s you know, Google was built on digital native, so your ISVs. Right? So they are really heavy around their data, and what they could do it do with it.

Google Search. Right? They are now grounding their AI models using, all the intelligence off of Google Search. That’s more data than anybody has access to. So it’s it’s phenomenal to help stop the hallucinations.

But, you know, when when you’re looking from a comparative standpoint and you’re saying, okay. Everybody has something. Everybody’s playing in this space from an Azure, AWS, right, GCP. They all have something, but but there are differences among them.

So it’s finding the best solution for your challenge. Right? We’ve got, just from a Microsoft standpoint, right, you’ve got, the health cloud, and they have, financial services cloud. When you’re talking about Google Stack, you’re talking about modules.

So they’ve got MEDLN, which is the medical language model. They’ve got a financial services language model as well. And those are components built out that has the the the core of what you need, whether it’s HIPAA compliance or PI, whatever you need for that compliance regulation built into a model that that you bring your data into to build on top of to get your solution.

Do they both kind of address what you’re trying to do? Yeah. But they’re different. You use them differently. So using consultants from rapid scale to come and help you say, okay. When we’re looking at this AI or this business challenge, here’s really the best stack, the best opportunity for you to get, you know, an ROI that makes sense that, you know, is is comparatively speaking, you know, you know what your what what that ROI is gonna hit at what timeline based on what business challenges and, all the investment that comes up front.

And you guys are you guys are rolling out these this practice, like, pieces at a time, which I think is smart and and responsible.

Chandler, if you wanna slide to that next p or the next slide over, you know, these are some of the the capabilities that you have right now. And I know there’s additional ones that you’re always looking at that are coming soon. But with that AI story that rapid scales went to market with, and now this partnership and mixing in with the other, you know, hyperscale capabilities, etcetera, there’s really you know, in time, there’s really not gonna be much you guys can’t assist an organization with. Is that a fair statement?

Well, I I think that, you know, there there are definitely areas where we’re leaning in, that in areas where we’re not as much leaning in. So we are definitely leading with the migration services, building out the AI practice, and the cost optimization with that.

Our road map is extensive. Like I said, I’ve got a Google product manager that works really difficult, long hours, to build out this this this whole holistic practice so it’s matched and married to our other hyperscalers.

But I would say that, you know, we we we do have, capabilities to resell workspace. We are not going to market as a workspace reseller. That’s not our our our our core focus, at all. Definitely not for two thousand twenty five.

You know, maybe one day we might pick that up, but everybody likes to say, oh, work workspace. It’s Google. And but, no, we we really are, focusing on, you know, BigQuery and, the migration stack and capabilities, as well as Vertex AI, as we build out our data scientist team. And then we also have, of course, cost optimization that’s kind of, foundational for any of the hyperscale practices that you wanna talk to is, you know, how do I save money today?

You know? How how do how do I make sure that I haven’t left on any of those, test dev, environments that are just burning cash? Nobody’s paying attention.

So that that’s kind of where we’re leaning in.

So the the one thing that I would say, and just I wanna clarify. So goo, Google Workspace, formerly G Suite. Right?

Mhmm. Yep.

We’re not a fan of the name change, but, they decided they didn’t take our input, and they went ahead and changed the name. So this is a little set with everybody on the call. That’s not gonna be an area of focus. It’s a pull through if these other components are met.

So we don’t have any anybody disappointed in in bringing those opportunities over, right off the bat. So One hundred percent. The the other major piece of it and some of the things I’m seeing here. Guys, if I’m an advisor, the things that I’m seeking out and that are number one steps, database migration, data lake migrations, everyone is gonna be focusing more and more.

Key Considerations for AI Implementation

And, I’m gonna throw a little bit of a curveball here. And Jason Lowe, to not have him just hit on this one part, Jason, if you’re available to come back in as our resident AI expert, what’s the number one thing that really happens when somebody’s trying to get into an AI conversation?

What are the first couple of questions we always ask?

What are the first couple of questions we as tech advisers ask?

Yep.

Well, generally, it’s surrounding what type of AI are these different types of things that they’re trying to get to. Do they have any use cases that they had in mind? If so, did they need need to go through a little bit of ideation process and figure some of this stuff out? But probably one of the biggest things is where’s your data? And what does your data look like? And what’s it structured like?

And that is the focus. Right? Like, if I’m if I’m jumping in here, guys, if anybody in the chat can let me know is my audio level a little bit better. I was getting really nice and relaxed leaning back in my chair, so that was probably on me.

But the the database migration and that data lake migration and and the cleansing and things that that go into that is gonna be an area of focus that this could be another road map to get Google involved via rapid scale into your customer conversations.

Ultimately, guys, if I’m an advisor and I’m sitting here and I know a little bit about AWS, a little bit about Azure, some stuff about Google, it’s a bit overwhelming. So, like, give me what my partner experience looks like as far as, like, how that comes into play. I know that it just started the the partner manager getting them into the right resources.

And and is it a, like, a a cloud workshop, or is it just a is it a series of conversations in which you guys figure out where to place, you know, the customer’s, data, and what does that look like?

So I I would I would say that, you know, obviously, we have workshops, across the board from, infrastructure workshops and assessments to, going into AI workshops, you know, migration, the whole nine yards. Right? Everything that you’re looking to do. We’ve got some use cases that Michael’s gonna speak to about some of the customers where we’re doing exactly that and have done exactly that.

We’re we’re building up so that we can handle this at scale. So, you know, from an AI perspective anyway.

But, our AI workshops are are definitely, you know, coming into the customer conversation with, you know, where are you at? How novice are you? Do you need a two hour freebie refresh on what is the Vertex AI stack and and, you know, how can I use it today, versus actually going through some use case scenarios? Or maybe they, you know, have done some touch and play with it, and and they actually discuss what an ROI and a POC would look like and and, and go from there. So we we have several modules to help, a customer understand, and we have a lot of funding programs, obviously, as a partner to Google, to help offset those expenses as well.

You know, so it’s it’s it’s there there’s tons of opportunity for all for us to assist. Anyone who wants to have that conversation, but always leading into any AI conversation is, is your data ready? And I think everyone across the board would would say that’s always the first case. People love to say AI, but is your data ready?

Do you know where it’s housed, how it’s housed, you know, access to it, cleanliness to the data? I mean, there’s a million different factors that go into it. Not technical, but I know they exist. So, you know, but we’re we’re here to help in in in that conversation to move it forward.

Well and I would say, guys, on the call, if you got tired of hearing the words digital transformation a couple years ago, get ready to hear data cleansing or data readiness, moving forward. That is gonna be the the phrase that is gonna accompany a ton of conversations as a starter, where you’re at, something to bring up to your clients.

Negotiating Contracts with Google

There’s a couple of really good questions that have come through the chat, and I just in the flow of it. And, one of the ones, from Brandon, Ivy said, hey. If we got a large spend, and there’s a good partnership with Google, is there any kind of opportunity that exists to then, invest in here? Michael, you’re you’re raising your hands. You wanna take that one?

Oh, please. Let me jump into that one. And and, also, Brandon, fantastic question.

Coming from a Google background over here, I I think the beautiful piece about a large companies that do business with Google, I can just speak to one that I I did a one year thirty million dollar deal with. Right? You would you would expect that large enterprises do a very good job at at at doing contracting and and knowing, knowing how to negotiate. But the thing about Google is, we don’t keep a lot of, how our how our budgetary constraints or a lot of the cogs that we turn to lower people’s pricing work.

So when you talk about being an expert in contracting, that’s where we’re gonna definitely, gonna find a whole lot of opportunity because good partnerships with Google is very, very good. Good negotiating with Google is very, very different. And, that’s what we were able to find with this customer that’s been with, been direct to Google for years, years and years. And with coming to, with coming to a, you know, another MSP or another partner like us, we’re able to really dig deep into the contracting and really match contracts to how we’ve done in the past with other large companies.

And we find lots and lots of ways to, to optimize, not only their bill, but optimize the contract and make it sweeter.

Yeah. I think it’s a good time to let’s let’s bump a couple of slides, Chandler, and go to the Google migration slide. In talking about that, you know, Michael, you talked about existing customers and answered Brandon’s quote. Brandon, I think you’re set. If you wanna give me a give us a thumbs up if that if that helps answered it.

But it sounds like, yes, there’s an opportunity. If there’s an existing client, either renegotiating some contracts, looking to expand what they’re doing, there’s a number of different directions that that could go.

Funding Programs and Migration Services

On these assessment and migration services, that’s another major piece of these partnerships. You know, Sachin, we talked a couple weeks ago around AWS and Microsoft and a lot of their funding programs. How does Google come into these funding programs? When you look at the products that you’re looking at, how did the how does that funding program work? Does that extend through you guys into the clients as well?

It does. And Anne’s an expert on the programs that we’re in. So go ahead, Anne.

Yeah. No. So, I mean, obviously, we have, DAF deal excel acceleration funds, which goes to your POVs, POCs, right, to help offset that expense, and then going into, partner sales funds, PSF. But we also have access to, premier level, funding programs, that typically, a partner level wouldn’t have just, from the visibility and the coverage and investment that Google has made from Jim Anderson and James Hardy, at Google who are are, executive sponsoring and then buying into the rapid scale partnership, which is fantastic. But we have programs like RAMP, rapid, accelerate acceleration migration platform. So that’s a funding program that they offer, for us to submit.

Obviously, it’s it’s it’s come up customer submitted for approval, just like everybody else everywhere else. But we we have quite a few programs to help, customers offset the expense, to invest in the Google Cloud platform. Especially if you’re not new to Google, you’ll get way more funding that way, just like every other hyperscaler. Right? They always want the new customers. So, there’s a lot of fun funding programs available for that.

Yeah. And I’ll also add, Koby, back to your earlier point, when we started the meeting, but being, hyper like, multi cloud, as rapid scale is, we actually have the ability to max funding levers across all the three clouds. So we’ll help customers compare how much money can you get from AWS versus Azure versus Google. And oftentimes, the techno the technology is so similar, like, compute is compute, storage is storage. If it’s just very basic stuff like that, then it really does come come down to financials. Like, how much lower can a customer’s adoption of the cloud be? In some cases, it is down to a funding level conversation.

Hey. And not to put you on the spot, Sachin, you you said on top of all three relationships. Right?

Yeah.

And we’re just here with a few hundred of our closest friends. Which one’s your favorite? I’m asking.

So in all reality, the reason there but let’s I wanna get through because you guys, you know, put together a really great deck. So I wanna I wanna hit on this next piece because I think this is gonna if I’m an advisor, this is gonna hit on something. I wanna leave room for a couple of, case, the case studies that you guys put together. And I also wanna touch on a little bit of, like, where to where to think Google versus AWS versus Azure if there’s any kind of quick hits there.

Cost Optimization Strategies in Cloud Services

So as we as we round this out, Chandler, let’s go to let’s go a couple slides forward on cost optimization. So speaking of cost, this is always a big conversation with customers. It’s number one, always in the Flexero state of the cloud report for the last, I don’t know, ten years. Number one thing is I wanna save money on cloud.

I wanna have my cost optimized. I wanna do all these things. Where does this come in from a FinOps point of, point of view and with Google in particular?

So I, you know, quite honestly, this is this, program is launching in, January. We we have it all done and ready and buttoned up, but it’s publicly launching in January.

So bring the opportunities today. I’m not saying don’t bring the opportunities. Bring the opportunities today. But we we are, full spin in January.

So, you know, basically, this is like like it’s, on on parity with, AWS or Azure for those of you who’ve already worked with RapidScale for the other hyperscalers around FinOps. Right? It’s, total visibility, spend optimization, and spend govern governance. It’s it’s it’s the full suite of going in, understanding what’s turned on, not turned on, who has authority, what that cloud spend looks like, where where are they, you know, hemorrhaging one day to the next, maybe on something that went wrong, somebody hit hit the wrong button, where we can, you know, have managed services to that, do alerts to say, hey.

You know, you’ve got a you’ve got a problem here and or self managed where they could go in and and actually see how their, you know, daily spend is going, to really be able to keep keep a a budget, as they continue to build out their, AI solutions to to drive the budget up, quite honestly.

Leveraging AI and ML in Cloud Solutions

Fantastic. So in speaking of AI, the I actually wanna I wanna make a point. The fact that you guys have all three hypersalers. So if a customer is across all three Mhmm.

Then that gives rapid scale such an advantage and be able to just see across everything and give that much more value back to, the the organization that’s that’s utilizing those. And, again, pretty rarefied errors as being able to do all three. Right? And that’s a that’s a distinct a big advantage for rapid scale.

Absolutely.

Another big advantage that I see you guys driving to is just that investment in the next category of conversation. If we wanna go a couple slides forward again, Chandler.

That’s right. AI, ML, and what’s going on? You hit on it earlier. Let’s just kinda circle back to to the big points here.

This gives us a little bit more insight to what that looks like with the Google relationship and some of those advantages that you pointed out. But they already have ready made LLMs for different verticals Mhmm. That are ready to come in for clients to tie into. That’s such a major piece of it where it’s just plug and play.

Mhmm. So what, you know, what else are you seeing here as just some of the major drivers of conversation?

I would I would say right now, there’s a lot of things that they’ve got, going, and and are launching and pushing. In two thousand twenty five, you’ll find that, they are really going after their CCI, which is their contact center AI solutions that they’re bringing to market.

Just about, you know, the largest telcos are looking at if not implementing, their CCA modules, and that impacts just about everybody who has to deal with customer base. So, you know, all the virtual assistants, chatbots. Right? How how do you respond to your customer? Where does the data? What AI can be used, to once again, make sure that the answers are correct, more human like, and, are based on, you know, historical data because once again, we all have clean data and, stored data and historical data. It’s great.

But they’re really leaning into that conversation. But going across the board, right, there’s there’s there’s a million different ways wherever you’re at in the industry, that that Google with their Vertex AI stack and Gemini, are really leaning in as as leaders in that space, I think. You know, they’ll tell you they’re leaders in the space. Gartner will say they’re leaders in the space as well, on on their AI capabilities.

And Yeah. I oh, go ahead, Michael.

I was gonna I was gonna jump in here real quick, and, that’s awesome, Ann, that you that you brought up all those points. But, what I wanted to throw out here was, was the model garden that Google has on their website. Just talking about what what they’re doing to make sure that you and any whether you’re a customer, whether you’re the CTO, whether you’re a person that’s just now thinking about jumping into the cloud, it’s all about putting putting all the data in front of the customers. Right?

With model garden, you’re, you know, you’re able to, like, grab features that, like, allow your enterprises to to match models to their needs. A lot of people aren’t coming into this AI space as as experts. I I know I didn’t come into here as an expert. But, you know, over these last year and a half, you know, using Vertex AI and now with, the big Gemini coding assistant, I think it’s I think it’s the biggest piece about what Google’s great about is showcasing what their big piece of their pillar is.

Right? You’ve got your model guard for Vertex AI and all these pieces. Google has, three times less products than AWS because of the fact that we roll things in and we’re a little bit more prescriptive on those pieces. And I think going forward with a a lot of these AI pieces, and along with document AI, it’s been spreading like wild wildfire with all of the, a lot of the law firms out here.

You can think of those old days of people, you know, pushing papers and faxing all day long. Document AI has completely transformed the way that even paralegals store documents and even get get documents to being able to, you know, turn into an argument. So huge pieces out there.

Case Studies in Healthcare and Government

So what I’ve picked up on, guys, just to to for everybody on the call, if I’m just if I’m pulling anything out of this conversation, I’m pulling Google’s solid in financial markets. They have models built for that. They’re great in that. You just mentioned the law the legal market.

Right, Michael? You’ve got some case studies that we wanna get to. If you wanna go ahead and push a couple of slides forward, is or to the next slide, Chandler. But I wanna I wanna give time for those because I think these are really impactful and have you go through them.

To answer a question earlier in the chat, from our old friend Anthony Hansen, our first cloud solutions architect here at Telarus and now a member of the rapid scale team in a full circle motion, he asked, hey. What is what’s the partner community?

You know, how much are they asking for Google? And, you know, how much does that come up? Jason, you’re part of the same chat rooms I am on the solutions architects and engineers. Google gets asked for quite a bit. This is the biggest issue is, in my opinion, there was a couple of answers for it. We never really invested in those relationships. We at Telarus are so excited that that RapidScale is investing so heavily and going down these roads.

I mean, Jason, you probably see just as much as I can, in some of those chats and and ask on the engineer side of things. Can you confirm that it’s pretty there’s a pretty good appetite for Google, especially with the AI conversations taking place?

Absolutely. I mean, everybody’s hearing about the advancements of Gemini, and so, inherently, they’re thinking that Google is really leading on the AI front, and they are. And then there are a lot of people that are looking for alternatives to Microsoft and and Amazon for a variety of different reasons, and Google definitely comes up quite a bit.

Yeah. So speaking of Google and a couple of things that you guys have already seen, Michael, I think this is your time to shine. If you wanna walk us through a couple of these use cases, man, I’d love to hear about them.

I would love to on that one, Kobe. Thank you. So, to to how we’ve been helping customers this year and a couple of those examples. Right?

So, we’ll just we’ll just speak on the health care piece. Right? Well, Google’s, huge in health care and life sciences. We’ve we have very few verticals that we pop out and make sure that we lean into extra, but health care and life sciences being one of those.

We had a client that, needed a little bit more security, technical infrastructure.

We’ve, of course, GCP being extremely compliant with all of our pieces. They reached out to us to go ahead and help them with that piece. They had, you know, making sure scalability and, like, of course, I said it, and I’ll say it again. HIPAA compliancy.

Right? I think everybody wants their data protected. They want all of their data put together correctly, and they want it stored and accessible where they need it, whether it’s across regions or it’s gonna be internal. So that was our first challenge right there.

How are we gonna do it? What, what does it look like inside of Google? And how are we gonna make you feel warm and fuzzy with all of my customers’ data? Right?

Snap us into action. So rapid scale, we completed a full infrastructure assessment. That’s a that’s part of the first pieces. Right?

Let’s let’s show you how how we’re gonna go about, getting the foundation built to figure out what’s underneath what’s underneath the the hood of this car. So we get in there. We, we we we start off with an assessment because we always wanna dot our i’s and cross our t’s. I’m pretty sure we start with an assessment on almost every on on every migration that we do.

And addressing security concerns. Right? This is huge. This is an election year. I’m sure a lot of CISOs, everybody in security.

No one no one wants to be on the front page of CNN. You know what I mean? I think that CISOs every and it’s definitely the the dream of everyone. Don’t end up on the front page of CNN with a with a break in.

So we wanted to start off with a well architected framework, WAF. So when we go and we create these items and we get these statements of work, our architects are working within a well architected framework, but I’ll I’ll like AWS and Azure, our statements of work and our creations that our architects and our engineers are putting out there, they are combed through and we are built together with Google’s architects when we come through and we get our statements of work. Why? When we get funding for you, for your customers, for for us in general, Google likes to make sure and double checks to make sure that everything we are going down the line is to the t.

We mistakes are made sometimes in humans, but, not on our side when people when we have so many checks and balances. So we created the architecture, and we started getting to the solution. So we created a road map, presented the statement of work, on both sides, right, to the customer, verified, the interoperability on the on the Google side as well. And at this point, we were able to get this done and a full rebuild with the with the customer’s approval.

But I think the big piece that I that I that I love on this piece right here is Google is the most affordable cloud out of all the clouds. Azure, AWS, Google, all all like, Google is the most affordable cloud. Why? Like, eighty percent of the world’s traffic is gonna be going through Google Rails.

So we’re able to push that savings right over to our customers, and I think that that ends up in a lot of extra funding for the customers as well. So it’s a it’s a huge one.

Government Collaboration and Use Cases

So, and let’s go to the next one because I think this one I like this this use case because it’s always really easy to work with US government.

Yeah. And to hit all you know, to work through all of their, you know, everything. So if you wanna walk through this and then, you know, we’ll kinda butt it up with a couple more thoughts and and turn the call back over to Jason to to wrap up the the Tuesday call here.

Perfect.

So, I I I love, I love you your jump into this one. You know? The US government has lots of lots of lots of pieces that we gotta make sure are right. Right? So let’s start with the challenge here. I’m sure everybody on this call, has had a client that’s had right licensing renewals that they did not wanna keep or had some questions about. So, I’ll kinda double click into that first.

Google doesn’t sell groceries, and we don’t get you addicted to licensing.

What we do is we make sure that we take care of products, and we rinse and repeat those products, not in a way that you have to be stuck for for years and years and years. So the client was looking to completely migrate their two centers from, from on premise into the Google Cloud. Right away, that’s, for me, that’s easy pickings when it comes to what we do. And we conducted a full infrastructure assessment. Like I said, step one, let’s make sure we’re, we’re measuring measuring twice, cutting once, and we roadmap the entire client’s data, send infrastructure, security, and all their capabilities.

Understanding Client Needs in Cloud Migration

Now when we went down this route, and I can’t I can’t say this person’s name, but, this technology governmental agency that we worked with, they have been wanting to get into the cloud for a couple of years. And when it came down to us getting this getting this together, these are what these are some of those people that came with a lot of great questions. And it wasn’t because they were scared, but they it’s because they didn’t know.

And I think when going into this and the one of the questions up there, and I’ll I’ll I’ll I’ll kinda tap into this, was what what dip double click on what you just said.

Sorry to interrupt you. I know that’s rude. No. But pay attention to that.

This is the government with a lot of expertise. Right? I assume these guys knew what they were doing. They wanted to get in the cloud for two years and didn’t know what they didn’t know. So they still there’s still this major opportunity no matter who the client is or how big they are to have these conversations, especially needs advanced conversations because they’re not able to keep up with the expertise and the the nuance and the changes that rapid scale is with these partnerships and the trainings that they’re going through. So, Michael, sorry. I just wanna really point that out for our advisers on the phone.

Empowering Clients with Training and Resources

No. That’s that’s a huge call out, Kobe. I appreciate that. And I think, again, working with, with government agencies, I think they they want to make sure that not only when they’re making these moves, they’ve got the people and the processes in place to keep things running smoothly. So a big piece of this migration is now they’re ready to migrate with confidence. Confidence with Google, I know that, Azure has some training pieces and so does AWS.

Google has Google Cloud skills boost. Whenever we’re doing a migration, and with any new customer going on, Google supplies licenses for those customers. I I’ve given up to a hundred before on the house. And this is for Azure professionals learning Google, for on premise professionals learning Google, for AWS professionals learning Google.

You gotta meet customers and and and teammates where they’re at. So another big piece about that warm and fuzzy feeling on a handoff when it when we’re doing and completing a statement of work, it’s about feeling like not not only they know they can call us, but we leave them with ways to learn, get better, and ask those questions. And I think that’s another huge piece that Google really harps on is they don’t they wanna make sure that you choose the right technology, but they wanna make sure that you have access to learning and mastering that technology for the for your internal people as well.

Because it’s nice to give us a call because I I love taking care of customers. But sometimes you wanna, you know, make your own oatmeal in the morning. So I think this is another big piece that, Google has a a great feather in their cap on.

IT Management Strategies for Clients

So we’re a lot of customers, guys, there’s three levels of IT management. You have in source, where they do everything themselves. You have co source, where they’re gonna be utilizing an MSP like a rapid scale and in their own team, and they’re gonna wanna divide and conquer or co manage the environment. And then you have complete outsource where they’re just like, hey. I’m out. We make money in the co source and the outsource. However, a lot of these turns come from these these migration projects, and they turn into those managed services.

Seventy plus percent or greater of those those deals flip over. And here’s why.

It’s all well intended that they’re gonna take advantage of what Michael just laid out. Hey. We’re gonna take those licenses. We’re gonna go learn Google, and all of these things happen.

It’s the same intention that most people have at the beginning of the year. I’m gonna go to the gym. I’m gonna lose that twenty five pounds. I’m gonna get, like, a six pack back.

I’m gonna be healthy, and I’m gonna do all these things. And then life happens. Right? And it’s eight o’clock, and we’re at Taco Bell, and we’re sad.

Never mind. It’s personal note. We don’t need to get into that. However, things change. And so it’s that partnership and that introduction to the expertise and rapid scale in the Google space.

Transitioning from Migration to Managed Services

You know, Anne, you’d mentioned the road map is to right now, it’s migration services. The managed services are coming. That that conversation and that flip to where you guys can so co source or outsource is right around the corner as well.

Yeah. I mean, we’re we’re here we’re here to beat the customer where they’re at and to help them, you know, whether whether they need fractional hours for us to oversee and and, you know, look over their shoulder and help them deploy, and manage down the line, or we’re here to help, you know, do it for them.

We we wanna meet the customer wherever they’re at. And I just wanna add on to that last, use case. I think one of the other benefits that we have, you know, when you’re talking about a massive migration from on prem to cloud, you know, what do you do with all that equipment?

And our, cloud solution, manager went in there and and hooked them up with a company to come and buy all the equipment from them to help with that ROI investment. Right? Because it’s not just a, you know, hey. We’re moving. It’s like but I still have physical assets that I have to deal with. So we have those relationships to pull to the fore as well.

Well and I I wanna get on this last slide. Thank you for those, use cases.

So, guys, we’ll we’ll end on this because we already hit on the funding, right, earlier in the conversation.

Exploring Google AI Accelerated Workshops

The Google AI accelerated workshop, just topic of the moment and will be for the next foreseeable future. The impact that this is having, can you just kinda hit on that really quickly?

Yeah. It’s been really great to go in. And like I said, there’s a lot of customers, that, right, everybody’s kinda playing with with Gemini a little bit or, you know, a chatbot and, you know, everybody’s having kind of signed up, you know, oh, I I made the sentence shorter or, you know, I got it to to do whichever, but they really don’t know from an application standpoint. There’s so so many different elements within Vertex AI stack for Google, right? Going in and truly understanding what is AI when it comes to a business challenge? How, how, how can I address this with the stack and understand, you know, what that business model could look like for us?

We come in with these, acceleration workshops just really to help the customer understand what the stack is, where it can be applied, and and really get a view of, you know, what what what it would do for their business to help them move faster forward and and obtain an ROI. Google’s seeing at least a six percent ROI right now from their customer base with Deployed AI.

Concluding Remarks and Next Steps

Well, guys, I would say just to kind of conclude this hand hand call back over to JLo to to wrap up, the Tuesday call. The biggest piece is, if you wanna go a couple slides more to the next step slide perfect. Right?

Contact your local RPM, your regional partner manager for rapid scale. Hit up your national if if you need some additional support. Marin is, like I said, like none other. She will be all over it.

And the biggest thing here, guys, going back to those big consulting firms that that Sachin had mentioned, like Accenture Deloitte, all that. These type of relationships that you’re able to forge with suppliers like Rapid Scale and others put you in that position to be in a consulting piece of it. You’re think of the options that you have now that you didn’t have two, three, four years ago. And, again, that methodology and sales experience process is what’s gonna continue to drive that customer loyalty.

Leveraging Partnerships for Enhanced Support

Our engineers are on standby to help and and be that first line of conversation to get you to the right suppliers.

But, guys, we’re so excited about adding Google to an already powerhouse lineup of products and relationships that Rapiscope brings to the table. I think you guys did an excellent job laying this out, and I know that, we’re all very excited. If there’s any additional questions, guys, throw them in the chat, and we’ll be back at the end of the call to address those. Thank you, guys.