Suppliers Videos

RapidScale for Personalized Cloud and IT Solutions

September 25, 2024

Telarus technology advisors are leveraging RapidScale to provide personalized cloud and manage IT solutions, focusing on creating immediate impact with clients and meeting them where they’re at. Challenges faced by customers include managing technical debt, IT sprawl, and modernizing legacy applications, and rapid scale aims to address these by adding world-class experts and expanding its multi-cloud portfolio. The acquisition and integration of Logicworks enhances RapidScale’s capabilities in Microsoft Azure and AWS, while the expansion into Google practice includes professional services, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. RapidScale helps businesses future-proof by navigating the changing market, offering a consultative approach to AI expansion, and encouraging consulting arrangements for data organizations. Advisers are encouraged to align with rapid scale for success and ambitious goals, thinking of it in the context of public cloud and future-proofing businesses.

Introduction to RapidScale

When it comes to personalized cloud and manage IT solutions, Telarus technology advisors around the globe are leaning into rapid scale because of their robust capabilities, depth of experience, and customer orientated philosophies. In fact, when you peel back the onion, you can see how partners are navigating the most complex solutions with minimal friction for their customers and creating amazing results because of all the tools and services and experts that Rapidscale brings to bear. Today, I’m really lucky to have Bob Buchanan, their EVP of sales, with me. Bob, welcome.Tim, thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here.Yeah, buddy. Hey. We’re having tremendous success at Telarus with Rapidscale. Let’s unpack a couple things for the folks watching this video on rapid scale. I wanna dive right into it and talk about the opportunities that advisers are creating with rapid scale.

Creating Immediate Impact

You get the a front row seat to all of the opportunities from all of the channel.What’s the best opportunity for advisers to create an immediate impact with their clients, using your strengths?Yeah. Tim, great question. It was something we think about all the time.I will say that I’m I’m very used to partners and advisers coming to us and say, what what’s your what’s your superpower? What’s the one thing that you do? And, you know, I I I almost had to pause and stop myself from answering that direct question. And and the reason why I’m do I do that is because the market has changed so dramatically.The demands on the customer have changed. That’s that’s made us change. We’ve had to change over the the sixteen years that we’ve been or fourteen years we’ve been in the channel. We’ve had to evolve to meet the demands of the customer, and we’re noticing that the technology advisers are changing.And as they change, I’m almost challenging that question. And I’m saying your opportunity with with rapid scale in in cloud is to is to meet the customer truly where they’re at. And I know a lot of people say that, but what I mean by that is, hey. The client you’re talking to, I’m almost guarantee you they’ve got challenges such as managing technical debt, IT sprawl.Maybe they’ve got a stretched staff and it’s gonna they have a lean IT staff in comparison to the number of employees they’re supporting internally. They might be looking at a fractured IT posture. They might have siloed data. They might be looking to modernize their legacy applications.Yes. Just thinking about about those handful of challenges, our portfolio, our multi cloud portfolio, Hill, aligns perfectly with those with with those challenges. So our solutions align. The role of the technology advisor is to understand, okay, my customer is is is facing these critical, decisions.How do I know enough about the rapid scale portfolio, partner with us to meet them where they’re at? And if we can think more that way versus, I’ve got maybe, an infrastructure deal or a Doctor deal, You’re gonna get a lot bigger piece of the pie.

Maximizing Customer Priorities

You’re gonna improve stickiness, dominate the customer share, and have a wonderful partner and customer experience.Yeah. I think it’s a great point. You know, I can’t help but notice the whiteboard behind you, and you think about every customer that we have, whether it’s in their in their home office or their headquarters, they have a whiteboard or a OneNote or something where they have these priorities, and they all involve how do they maximize what they have today while while they work towards what they want, and it aligns exactly with the with with what you said, which is meet them where they are and help them navigate that journey to where they wanna go.With your resources, maybe just lean in for a second on some of your capabilities, your team’s capabilities combined with Telarus that helps identify the where they’re at and where they’re going. Sometimes the customers are a bit confused on what should the road map look like. Can you maybe describe how you help navigate that?

Understanding Customer Profiles

Yeah. I mean, there’s a there’s a difference between how we kind of identify maybe identify that early and how we can pick up on what’s this customer looking for. And then once we’re engaged, obviously, that becomes more of a consultative type approach.But we partner we partner with the, the TAs in a sense that we’re we’re looking at and not everyone, but most the most strategic ones, we might say Yeah. Hey. Let’s truly try to understand the profile of your customer. And then we can use demand gen type technologies to get intense signals to to really approach them in a proactive way. Because I think a lot of times, we’re just making the assumption. Well, my customer is not doing that. They’re not making those decisions.Come on. These technology today is the nervous system of these these companies. And whether if you’re a brick and mortar business selling widgets, you’re leveraging technology to get a competitive advantage, reduce cost, and then it’s really important to understand what’s going on in there. But you it’s hard to figure that out maybe one conversation or or or just a few, engagements.How can we really pick up on what’s going on? Especially if the if you’re talking about mid market into the smaller enterprise, it’s almost impossible to know all what what where they are at in the journey cross functionally and across different departments. So so that’s what we’re doing from a technology and using digital to try to help. But then once we get engaged and we’re able to say, okay.

Investing in Human Capital

We have a customer that really wants to to to talk with us about how they navigate, make these decisions, man, we’ve doubled down on the channel. From a human capital standpoint, we’re just having resources, not just any resources. We are looking to we are looking to have the best of breed, channel organization in this industry.And and we continue to hire almost every month. We’re adding more folks, but we’re adding folks that are not only I can help the partner the partners and the TAs, understand what tools and resources are available Yeah. From a product standpoint, from a marketing standpoint, how to engage. But then once I’m there and in front of the customer, having the right solution engineers, architects, sales resources, where we can partner shoulder to shoulder to set ourselves up and elevate ourselves beyond the competition. So I’m not sure if that completely answered your question, but that’s the things we’ve been focused on this year in twenty twenty four.

Reducing Friction and Adding Value

Yeah. It’s exactly where I wanted to go, Bob. We see the real evidence of that every every day, day in and day out. You have world class experts.You’re adding more world class experts at every step of the journey to help reduce the friction like I talked at the very top of our conversation. How do we reduce the friction, add value, create buyer awareness and confidence so that the buyers, whether they’re SMB, mid market, or enterprise, they’re making confident decisions, data backed decisions based on the the resources you bring to bear with Telarus. So I think it’s really been tremendous.

Multi-Cloud Portfolio and Roadmap

The other thing you have is world class products.Of course, you’re excited about them as a leader. Right? But let’s let’s double down on the things that you’re most excited about today, but also some of the things on the road map as people are starting to plan for next year and even way down. You know, we talked off camera about some of the planning that we’re involved in with customers that they’re really looking to future proof their business, be with a rapid scale that can help them navigate not just today, but the future. So maybe touch on some of the the best in class products you have today, but also, what are you excited about on the road map?

Expanding Product Offerings

Yeah. And and I met I referenced earlier the our multi cloud portfolio. And, again, we’ve been in the channel now for fourteen years and started in the channel. And I think that the community has always seen us as, hey. Those guys do private cloud really well. They’re really they might be experts in in virtual desktops, and they’ve got this huge depth of Microsoft’s expertise. All of that’s true, and and that’s not going away, and it’s still a a huge part of our business.But as I mentioned at the outset, the market’s changing, and you’ve gotta you gotta skate to where the puck is going. Yeah. And you can do that organically. And some of our our our cohorts and competitors have chosen to do that. There’s nothing wrong with that strategy.But we wanted to get there more confidently and faster. And you might have noticed in two thousand twenty three, we made an acquisition of a public cloud entity, and we fully integrated Logicworks into the portfolio.And what that did is it gave us an industry leading, almost a a an a GSI level, customer experience and capabilities from an Azure, Microsoft Azure, and AWS perspective.So immediately, we saw our opportunities within the the partner community explode around public cloud.Right.And we’re one of the the the few that have, AWS premier status and Azure MSP experts simultaneously. And, again, that that that’s very unusual.So we feel very confident there. But what are we just stopping there? The answer is no.

Google Practice and AI/ML Focus

We just announced, our our Google practice.And it’s early, so we’re in phase one of that, which phase two is coming later this year. But professional services, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cost optimization, all available to the partner community today as well as managed services on the road map. So, we really are are betting big that while Google’s the third largest public cloud, ecosystem, that they’re they’re quickly going to be competing in this lesson in this market across multiple verticals.But all of that in what’s, I think, less lesser known is our AI and ML practice. And I think the what the channel has, we’re we’re so uniquely positioned because I think what but it’s upon us to communicate the value proposition. Yep. And I think partners here, AI, and they think ColoCopilot or they think GenAI or they think, maybe they think what the feature sets that maybe some of the UCaaS organizations are coming to market with and all that stuff is applicable.We’re coming at it from a consultative perspective. And to us, it’s a data story. And when you can speak to a customer and and really have them open up to where their data resides, and it’s usually in disperse environments and in other regions environments. Could be in Salesforce, could be on multiple platforms.But most likely, that that data, they’re trying to monetize it in some way. They’re trying to make better, more educated decisions and and ultimately, subsidize or automate, you know, what humans can do and do it faster, and and really make better business decisions. And our practice will come in and and tell customer, well, your your data is either in a good place from an integrity standpoint or you’ve got work to do, and that’s quite common. And then we’ll come in with a with a POC, a proof of concept, and create the models.And if the proof of concept is a go and we wanna run the project, the customer sees value, which ninety nine percent of the time, that’s gonna happen, or we wouldn’t get that far.

Enhancing Business Outcomes

We’ll then deliver on a very comprehensive project that delivers a visual output that ultimately can enhance business outcomes.And, again, that is all all all, partner commissionable. Today is not a ton of recurring revenue, but these are big PS deals Yes. That we’re competing in with with with with, again, GSIs and and large consultancies.But in the mid market, we’re cost effective, very competitive, and there’s this market’s only going to explode. So if you’re thinking about what’s coming, it’s it’s really that how do we build these data lakes, put the data in in a in a place that get where we can make actually some sense to it, where businesses can make better decisions? We’re a company that certainly can help with that strategy.Yeah. That’s a great point, and it doesn’t take away from what some of the other providers in the space are doing with AI. It’s applicable to their practice.

Organizing Data for AI

Correct.And the and the customer experience space for sure.But I think what you’re touching on is a really important point, which is you have to organize your data to make AI work at the level that a lot of people are envisioning it based on the tools they’re playing around with on the web. Right? The publicly available tools.If they want these LLMs, these large language models to work That’s right.If they want some of this real AI, robust AI problem solving to work, the the data containerization and security of that data is really important. And it’s exciting that you’re gonna help in that journey. And I think that’s gonna you know this. That’s why you added it. But that’s an area where we’re gonna encourage people to reach out to rapid scale to lean into these consulting arrangements because it sets the foundation for this AI expansion, which is awesome.Yeah. Many cost I’ll just say many and if you give me a moment, many customers will say to to partners and to us, I know what I want. You know, engage me here. These are a little bit different. They might you you’re gonna have to come across with, what can AI do for my business? We can come in and just do a a simple workshop, and that gets the brain stirring all kinds of ideas.So Yeah.And and look, that again, back to the whiteboard in the background. Sometimes a whiteboard session like that opens up opens up the neural pathways to possibility. Right? And that’s a good thing.It also sets the stage for you you, rapid scale, but also the technology adviser as the obvious expert in the buyer’s mind because you brought these new ideas to light where other people didn’t do that. Oh, hey. Look. We’re gonna run short on time.

Key to Success with RapidScale

There’s one more quick question I wanna get out of you. It’s sort of a rapid fire question, Bob. You and I have the unique opportunity. We’re grateful for it.We talked about it off camera. Do we get to engage with advisers? We get to engage with their customers? Is there one thing that sort of keeps you up at night where, man, I wish every adviser would do this because they’d be so much more successful.What’s the what’s the magic wand scenario that you wish everyone would do maybe when it comes to rapid scale or just in their business?Great question. I probably could answer with a number of different responses, but I’m gonna I’m I’m gonna go with this one.You You know, I think I think if you said rapid scale, real quick, what do you think of? You might think of Microsoft, because I mentioned earlier. You might think of desktops.I love them to think public cloud. I love for these partners to think, hey. That company’s made big bets on where the puck is going. And if there’s a public cloud opportunity, whether it’s Azure, Google, AWS, while the rest of the portfolio is very relevant, that’s the best of breed business.I love it. That’s where we’re gonna wrap it up, Bob. Thanks so much. When it comes to rapid scale, we want them to think public cloud, right, beyond all the other capabilities.There’s a lot of things you’re bringing to bear. We’re having tremendous success with you at Telarus. Our partners are are having great success. We encourage all of our advisors around the globe.Reach out to us for rapid scale. Let us know your needs. We’ll make the alignment. We’ll make the connection, and we’ll help you succeed and achieve your most ambitious goals.Bob, thanks again for being on. Appreciate you. We’ll see you soon.Tim, so much fun. Thank you.