msp azure migration program...page 5 msp azure migration program, customer application scenario |...

Customer Application Scenario | Onboarding Guide for Premier

Partners

March 2017

Version 2.0

MSP Azure Migration Program

ii

MSP Azure Migration Program, Customer Application Scenario | Onboarding Guide for Premier Partners

Table of Contents

1 Program Overview ................................................................................................................................... 4

1.1 Welcome .......................................................................................................................................................... 4

1.2 Who should read this guide? ................................................................................................................... 4

1.3 The Opportunity ............................................................................................................................................ 4

1.4 Benefits of Program Participation .......................................................................................................... 5

1.5 Customer Selection Recommendations ............................................................................................... 6

2 Program Stages ......................................................................................................................................... 6

2.1 Kick Off ............................................................................................................................................................. 7

Access to migration content and support ........................................................... 7

Continued progress check-ins ............................................................................ 7

2.2 Tools Training ................................................................................................................................................. 8

2.3 Discovery .......................................................................................................................................................... 8

2.4 Assessment ...................................................................................................................................................... 8

2.5 Migration ......................................................................................................................................................... 8

2.6 Build a practice .............................................................................................................................................. 9

2.7 Key Dates ......................................................................................................................................................... 9

3 Program Support Stakeholders ........................................................................................................10

3.1 Cloudamize .................................................................................................................................................. 10

3.2 Sysgain ........................................................................................................................................................... 10

3.3 Contact Overview ....................................................................................................................................... 11

4 Frequently Asked Questions ..............................................................................................................12

Is it possible to use assessment tools other than Cloudamize and still participate in the

program? .................................................................................................................................................................... 12

Can we get more Cloudamize licenses? ......................................................................................................... 12

I have a question, whom do I ask? .................................................................................................................... 12

How do we nominate a Customer? .................................................................................................................. 12

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How do we get access to the sales and technical content? .................................................................... 13

How does a partner obtain program funding? ............................................................................................ 13

For the latest FAQs, please see the master FAQ document, available on the program support

portal. ........................................................................................................................................................................... 13


1 Program Overview

1.1 Welcome

Welcome to the MSP - Azure Migration Program!

The purpose of this guide is to provide insight and guidance to those roles engaging in the ‘Managed

Service Provider (MSP) - Azure Migration Program.’

The objective of this manual is to help you successfully participate in the program and enable you to

achieve the stated program goals and deliverables. This guide will provide MSPs with information on

how to get started, and what to expect in terms of training, support, communications, incentives etc.

1.2 Who should read this guide?

The audience for this document are the following roles from the participating partners:

Program/Project Managers overseeing the overall migration effort

Architects, IT administrators and engineers involved in customer workload migrations to Azure

1.3 The Opportunity

The most successful MSPs have both customer assessment and migration capabilities to feed and grow

their cloud practice. Research has shown today’s landscape is very fragmented - several Independent

Software Vendors (ISVs) provide assessments but not migrations. Several System Integrators (SIs) and

Migration ISVs provide migration services but not assessments. Even fewer partners involved in the

assessment and migration practice also manage their client’s solutions end to end, post migration. For

MSPs this presents many revenue opportunities:

For assessments and migrations to become entry points for building a thriving cloud practice.

To identify inefficiencies in customers’ operations and offer more effective solutions.

To improve accuracy of migration ROI by using real customer data and build credibility through

a seamless process that can handle complex migrations.

To upsell customers on additional products and services with PaaS and SaaS offerings.

The program is designed to help qualified MSP partners grow their on-premises to cloud migration

business by helping them migrate five (5) customers (>= 20 production VMs running in Azure, per

customer) from on-premises environments to Azure. This program is part of the CSP Accelerate effort

and designed for partners focusing on solution delivery through the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP)

model and driving Azure consumption.


To assist partners through this program, Microsoft has engaged Cloudamize, a cloud assessment ISV to

provide the assessment tool and training and has also enlisted Sysgain Inc, a cloud migration support

partner to facilitate with the migration program and technical support.

1.4 Benefits of Program Participation

As participants in the ‘MSP Azure Migration Program,” partners are provided with a unique opportunity

to acquire crucial migration related knowledge to build and scale a thriving migration practice. Partners

will have access to the following:

o White Papers, technical guides, tools, presentations and a plethora of other content to help

support partners from workload discovery to assessment all the way through migration.

o Presales materials to initiate and guide partners with customer migration conversations.

o Migration Helpdesk: Remote support by Sysgain on architecture, tools, and processes.

o Assessment Licenses:

o Up to 200 Cloudamize Assessment Licenses (approx. 40 per customer).

o Funding to subsidize the first two (2) migrations:

o $15,000 for the first two (2) on-premise to Azure migrations to help your sales win

migration projects of at least 20 production VMs. A customer signed SOW (Statement of

Work or Proposal) is required to obtain the funding.

o Early Mover GTM Incentive Accelerator:

o For each region in the program:

o The first partner meeting all Incentive Accelerator criteria listed below will receive

$50,000 CSP GTM Incentive (cash payment).

o The second partner in the same region/subsidiary, meeting all program criteria listed

below will receive $30,000 CSP GTM incentive (cash payment).

o CSP GTM Incentive Accelerator Criteria:

1. Partner must have fully completed 5 or more customer migrations (>= 20

production VMs or workloads running in Azure, per customer) to their CSP

tenancy before June 15, 2017.

2. The customers should be net new and pre-approved for program, and must

be on the partner’s CSP tenancy.

3. Each of the five (5) net new migrated customers should be consuming >

$10,000 each in Azure (CSP) by or before June 15, 2017.

4. Partner agrees to two case studies from the customer migrations (Microsoft

will fund the selected case studies).

o Leads for future practice:

o Once a partner migrates their five customers and has a profitable Cloud Migration offer

in the market, Microsoft will start sharing appropriate leads with relevant partners.


1.5 Customer Selection Recommendations

Please check customers in your pipeline against the criteria listed below to determine if they are

suitable for the program. Preferred customers are ready to quickly start a migration project when

presented with a strong plan and have the following characteristics:

Choose customers that have at least 20 production virtual machines on-premise that they will

migrate to the partner’s CSP tenancy.

Customer is ready to migrate to the cloud within a short timeframe.

Scale: Scope of migration should be significant and manageable for you (20-40 VMs).

Suited for the cloud:

o Low regulatory overhead: Customer is in an industry with low regulatory restrictions (e.g.,

ideally not defense, finance, healthcare, or retail).

o Industry Pressure: Prioritize customers in verticals who face pressure to reduce CAPEX.

o App portfolio: Select customers whose app portfolio supports migrations (i.e. high

proportion of MSFT apps, ISV supported cloud apps, and/or custom apps).

o On-premise TCO is not a blocker: Customer does not require fully baked business case.

Alternatively, the customer is willing to use assumptions/benchmarks to ground on-

premises TCO.

o No recent major hardware refresh: Recent hardware refreshes might lock customer into

their datacenters for several more years.

o Avoid complex workloads: Given the timeframes, it is recommended partners avoid

complex workload migrations that could take more than a few months from start to

finish.

Cloud-inclined customer: Customer is convinced of the cloud business case and wants to pursue

an aggressive migration strategy.

Willingness to deploy agent based tool: Ability to conduct a security audit on ISV tool in less

than two weeks.

2 Program Stages

Because this program is designed primarily to support partners with the discovery, assessment and

migration steps of on-premise workloads to Azure, a typical partner engagement will go through the

the following phases during the program:


2.1 Kick Off

Partner participation starts with an online/call meeting with the Microsoft Program Manager, the

Sysgain team, and the partner’s migration virtual team. The call/meeting will be scheduled by Sysgain.

As mentioned earlier, we expect partner virtual teams to include Azure Architects, Solution Architect(s),

Primary Customer Manager(s), and migration Program Manager(s). This team will interact with

respective teams from Sysgain and Microsoft throughout the program to drive program goals.

The kick-off meeting will cover program details, touch points, timelines, and answer partner questions,

among other things. Please prioritize this call for a smooth and successful start.

Access to migration content and support

The best place for Migration Partners to find the most relevant and current information regarding

migrations and support is the MSP - Azure Migration Program Support Portal. Please take a few

minutes to sign into the site and ensure you have access to the content and support portal. Partners will

receive an activation email and should follow the instructions to register for the site (please check

Spam/Junk folders, as sometimes emails can end up there).

This portal has useful resources in the form of Documents, Decks, FAQs, Articles, Tutorials and other

collateral that provide detailed guidance covering the various phases including discovery, assessment,

scoring, and migration scenarios. These were built using best practices and industry recommended

tools and processes. Most importantly, the portal has Support-specific information that partners can

leverage to raise issues and escalations (via tickets) and get them resolved.

Continued progress check-ins

As part of the kick off meeting, a regular check-in will be setup with each partner to review

status/progress and identify any issues and escalations (business or technical) that need attention.

These check-ins will give everyone a clear picture of where they stand in the process and allow for

course corrections if and as needed.

For technical questions or other program-related issues, office hours calls will be scheduled and will be

available as an optional event for all participating partners. This is an opportunity for partners to

connect with Sysgain and Cloudamize representatives to get their questions answered or issues

resolved. Please check the program support portal regularly for office hours schedules.

https://cspmigration.freshdesk.com/support/home



2.2 Tools Training

Partners are encouraged to participate in either an online Cloudamize training session or

watched the recording at a time of their convenience.

Ensure your Solution Architects and Azure Architects have attended an ASR training session or

watched the recording at a time of their convenience.

Links to ASR and Cloudamize training can be found on the program support portal.

The online training schedule can be found on the program support portal.

2.3 Discovery

Please determine the number of hosts that will need Cloudamize agents as part of the migration

process.

Request and obtain Cloudamize licenses based on the number of hosts per customer. Licenses

can be requested through submitting a completed Customer Nomination Form for each

customer (form available on the support portal).

Install and configure Cloudamize agents in customer environment.

The tool will run for 2 weeks to collect detailed application and infrastructure information. On

day 15, data on workloads running on-premises (where agents were installed) will be available

through your Cloudamize dashboard for further assessment.

2.4 Assessment

Analyze Cloudamize tool output and score workloads:

o If needed, a working session with Sysgain can be scheduled to discuss the results.

Present findings and recommendations to your customer in a detailed migration proposal.

Get customer buy-in and present an SOW.

Get the SOW signed by the customer.

Determine migration timelines including cutover dates in conjunction with customer.

2.5 Migration

Leverage Azure Site Recovery (ASR) for production migrations.

Setup and configure ASR in customer environments based on workload assessment results.

Protect and migrate workloads to Azure. Leverage ASR features like Test Failover and Planned

Failover to ensure successful migrations.

Test extensively and switch over to Azure. (Decommission on-premises servers)



https://cspmigration.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/folders/22000004488


2.6 Build a practice

Understanding and learning through all the preceding steps, partners will gain unique

capabilities and valuable insights to evaluate what the migration practice should look like and

how you want to position and scale it in the market.

Please refer to the Microsoft Practice Development Playbook for additional details on building

and scaling a migration practice (available on the support portal).

When you have the migration practice profiled on your website, please let us know.

2.7 Key Dates

Please notice the following generic partner milestones and key dates to align with:

Date Action

January and February 2017 Recruit and submit five (5) customers for migration program before

February 28th, 2017.

Have appropriate stakeholders participate in the required tools training.

Plan workload discovery agent installations with customers.

February 2017 Assess the first customer.

Plan first migrations.

March 2017 Complete assessment of five (5) customers before end of March 2017.

Migrations should be underway in most customer environments.

April 2017 Migrations continue.

May 2017 Complete migrations.

Provide program feedback.

June 15, 2017 To obtain funding, this is the last day for submitting your customer-

signed SOW. Email your local Microsoft contact for this program.

June 30, 2017 Last day for the program and payout of incentives. All program support

expires.

Ongoing tasks:

Provide content/IP feedback on a regular basis to help refine it.



This program runs until the end of June 2017. After June 30, 2017, Microsoft, Sysgain, and Cloudamize

are not obligated to maintain the program elements.

3 Program Support Stakeholders

3.1 Cloudamize

Cloudamize is a cloud computing analytics platform that provides data analysis and recommendations

to speed up and simplify cloud migration and management. Their platform helps MSPs assess the

customer’s existing on-premises environment with automated application discovery and dependency

mapping to design a precise migration plan. Armed with these insights, partners can quickly make

accurate cloud suitability recommendations for customers to achieve an optimal cloud environment and

maximize their cloud investments.

Cloudamize will provide up to 200 node licenses for each partner (approx. 40 licenses for each

approved customer’s migration project). In addition, you will “meet” Cloudamize at training sessions

and some of the office hours calls.

3.2 Sysgain

Sysgain Inc. is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that will work with Microsoft and Migration Partners

participating in the program to provide business and technical support. Sysgain will also collect the

necessary data points from the program for reporting to Microsoft. Also, Sysgain is hosting and

maintaining the MSP Azure Migration Program Support Portal.

Sysgain will provide consulting services to help establish accurate workload migration schedules and

assist partners through the journey from assessment to migration and management. Sysgain will be the

main point of contact for Tier 1 and Tier 2 technical and business issues from partners and will provide

support services through various channels based on agreed upon SLAs. For issues that need escalations,

Sysgain will work with Microsoft to raise the issue with the right stakeholders and track and resolve

them as appropriate.

Specifically, Sysgain will help partners with:

Facilitating a kick-off call to ensure all are on the same page when it comes to program details

and timelines. Help partners getting started with the program and providing access to resources.

Scheduling partner training for workload discovery, assessment, and migration tools

(Cloudamize, ASR).



Ensuring partners have the right licenses to conduct workload discovery.

Supporting partners through the workload assessment phase.

Assisting partners as they encounter issues with documentation and best practices guidance.

Fielding and resolving any business and technical issues related to the migration effort.

Facilitating office hours for program and technical questions.

3.3 Contact Overview

Question

around:

Contact method When to expect to hear back?

General

program

Email: [email protected] Up to 2 business days (PST)

Meetings,

training and

reporting

Email: [email protected],

If Sysgain cannot answer partner’s

question, they will facilitate the right

connections

Within one (1) business day (PST)

Technical

Support

(including

Cloudamize

questions)

1) The MSP Azure Migration Program

Support Portal is the default support

channel for partners.

2) A partner can also reach Sysgain via

email primarily at

[email protected], or

otherwise at

[email protected].

3) For situations where partners need to

reach Sysgain immediately, they can call

1-855-797-4246 between 8:00 am and

5:00 pm Pacific Standard Time

(weekdays).

24x7 support service, excluding

holidays

A Two (2) hour response window

once the issue has reached

Sysgain support channels.

48-72 hour resolution time for

normal support tickets (non-

critical issues)

24-hour resolution time for critical

issues and showstoppers, unless

topic requires further escalation to

Azure Engineering/MSFT.

Issues involving Escalations to

Azure Engineering or MSFT will be

handled as a high priority issue,

and updates will be given on a

regular basis until issue(s) is

resolved.

mailto:[email protected]







All other

questions

Email: [email protected],

Within one (1) business day (PST)

4 Frequently Asked Questions

Is it possible to use assessment tools other than Cloudamize and still

participate in the program?

Yes, but you need preapproval from us, and we will only provide the licenses, training, and support for

Cloudamize. Please contact [email protected].

Can we get more Cloudamize licenses?

There is a maximum limit of 200 licenses per partner (approx. 40 licenses for each approved customer

project), but additional licenses can be purchased with the program discount. For additional licenses

purchases contact Cloudamize on this email [email protected].

I have a question, whom do I ask?

Your first point of contact is Sysgain, and you have the following options to contact them:

For general program questions, please contact [email protected].

For support, you can email [email protected] or call +1 855-797-4246. To create a support

ticket, go to https://cspmigration.freshdesk.com/support/home or email

[email protected] (auto-creates a ticket).

If Sysgain cannot answer your question, they know whom to contact and connect you with them.

How do we nominate a Customer?

Partners can get the Customer Nomination form on the program support portal. Once you fill out the

customer details, please send it back to [email protected], or submit it as a support ticket,

and the program team will review and approve.











How do we get access to the sales and technical content?

Microsoft has engaged with Sysgain to help facilitate the program, and you can get the sales and

technical content at MSP Azure Migration Program Support Portal.

How does a partner obtain program funding?

A partner is eligible for $15,000 per SOW for the first two (2) pre-approved customers (migration of

>= 20 production VMs to the partner’s Azure CSP tenancy), and once the partner’s local Microsoft field

representative has received a copy of the SOW between the partner and the customer outlining the

migration plan.

For the latest FAQs, please see the master FAQ document, available on

the program support portal.

