How do I Migrate to the Cloud without Stumbling over My Contracts? – part 1

Man, this cloud thing is really complicated sometimes. Have you noticed that opening up a discussion about moving one thing to the cloud is now like opening a can of worms?  Doesn’t it sometimes feel like the stars have to be aligned and every contract with every service provider, every piece of hardware and every user license needs to be expiring at the same time?  How the *#$% is that ever going to work!?!

Not to fear my IT friends…at least a little.  I am going to tell you one way to help move to the cloud without convoluting your whole technology landscape.

Here is an example:

For instance, what if you’re a multi-location company that’s phone system is dying and you want to go with a hosted VoIP phone system with guaranteed call quality – this means the service provider has to drop a circuit at every site.

….oh yeah, your MPLS contract doesn’t come up for renewal for another 2 years.

Crap.

Insert the same scenario as above and swap Hosted VoIP with Desktop as a Service (DaaS), and you want to have complete control of latency to all of your main sites, each of which has 20+ users.

 Crap …crap!

How can you get around this? Other than tabling the conversation for two years, when your MPLS contract is up for renewal?  …and despite many valiant attempts and tall tales of success, no provider is going to “buy you out of your contract” when it’s that big with that many months remaining.

What do you do?

Here is what I recommend…  Find a cloud provider that will let you install an MPLS node (from your existing provider), into their data center.

Two things have to happen, though:

• You have to find a cloud provider that will play nice and allow this.  Not all cloud providers allow you to put someone else’s MPLS circuit into their data center, but the ones that allow it are usually the best overall providers, anyway.
• Your cloud application has to be running on a dedicated server with them, since they obviously cannot connect your MPLS circuit up to a cluster of servers hosting thousands of clients.

That’s it.  You are not stuck for two years!  I hope that helps at least a little.

There is also another way which I’ll tell you about in Part 2 of this blog.  Leave me some comments and try to guess the other way I’m going to talk about.

Need a quote on the top 3 cloud providers that allow you to install an MPLS node directly into their data center? Click below.

MY TOP 3

About the Author
Mike Smith is the Founder and President of AeroCom and has been immersed in the business telecom and cloud industry since 1999. He has been the recipient of numerous industry awards and in 2011, he was honored as one of the top 40 business people in Orange County, CA., under 40 years old. Mike is passionate about simplifying the way IT buyers shop and select telecom and cloud solutions for their company. Follow Mike on LinkedIn, Twitter or SpiceWorks.