Paging Dr. Who...
How your cloud provider interacts with you can be very overlooked. You may be able to email customer support if there is a problem and wait for the allotted 24 hours for a response, or you can always call...if they have phone services available.
Most cloud computing environment (especially the large ones) have forgotten that it is not just providing a service, but it is providing you with the information you need BEFORE you (the IT person forced to sit in the basement under the leaky water main) are asked why the system is not responding as it should.
Cloud services should focus more on the service aspect than the clouds. I am so punny. Where was I? Oh, so, cloud services are often more about how much does it cost for me to stand up a virtual machine rather than:
A company with a strong customer support group will already have these answers in place and ready. A very strong support group will tell you what is happening with your machine before it happens so that you can collaboratively resolve the issue. Of course, even with all of the monitoring and management by the best tools of the environment in the cloud will not always predict the arising black death of a server. So, you may have to make a phone call.
I like the way we do this part...In a normal environment, you will call the help desk and be placed in queue with the elevator music playing Greensleeves in your ears (Christmas is only 2 months away and I hear it in the mall already). After sitting in queue what seems like a lifetime, you finally get the tier 1 support person who you are certain:
We do it slightly differently...We put highly qualified people from the U.S. on the front line with the power to create, destroy, and fix the issue on the first call. We count on them fixing more than destroying.
Most cloud computing environment (especially the large ones) have forgotten that it is not just providing a service, but it is providing you with the information you need BEFORE you (the IT person forced to sit in the basement under the leaky water main) are asked why the system is not responding as it should.
Cloud services should focus more on the service aspect than the clouds. I am so punny. Where was I? Oh, so, cloud services are often more about how much does it cost for me to stand up a virtual machine rather than:
- who will contact me with a problem;
- what is the problem and who is fixing it;
- when will the problem be resolved;
- why did this happen;
- where is the resolution to prevent it from happening again;
- how does this affect my organization?
A company with a strong customer support group will already have these answers in place and ready. A very strong support group will tell you what is happening with your machine before it happens so that you can collaboratively resolve the issue. Of course, even with all of the monitoring and management by the best tools of the environment in the cloud will not always predict the arising black death of a server. So, you may have to make a phone call.
I like the way we do this part...In a normal environment, you will call the help desk and be placed in queue with the elevator music playing Greensleeves in your ears (Christmas is only 2 months away and I hear it in the mall already). After sitting in queue what seems like a lifetime, you finally get the tier 1 support person who you are certain:
- does not have a clue as to what you are talking about;
- does not speak your language;
- does not have permission to resolve your issue;
- can't find your account number because you have a name;
- has to escalate the issue to someone else because they have no idea what a VM is;
- or all of the above.
We do it slightly differently...We put highly qualified people from the U.S. on the front line with the power to create, destroy, and fix the issue on the first call. We count on them fixing more than destroying.
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