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Debunking Microsoft Series Part 1: FUD Around Bringing Your Own License to Other Cloud Providers

Scott Braden
Mar. 14,2023 | SaaS Microsoft Cloud

This is part 1 of an ongoing series we call ‘Debunking Microsoft’ where we address the ongoing disinformation, half-truths, and mysticism surrounding its own products as it relates to Customer licensing, usage, contracts, terms, pricing, and much more. In part one, we address what we frequently hear from clients; that Microsoft has told them regarding usage of their own licenses in a cloud other than Microsoft's.....words to the effect of “You can’t use your existing Microsoft licenses on non-Microsoft clouds such as Amazon or Google.” Well, that’s not true and Microsoft knows it. This is just one case of Microsoft’s constant and consistent ...

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Cloud Cost Series (Part 1 of 3): Top 5 Price-Shock Phenomena of Cloud Costs

Thank you for joining us for this 3-part series on 2023 Cloud Costs, where we explore the Top 5 Price Shock Phenomenons of Cloud Costs, resulting in part from the Top 5 Workloads that are NOT Well Suited for the Cloud, and largely emanating from the Top 5 Reasons Why Clients Are Repatriating Cloud Workloads back to on-premises: Part 1: Top 5 Price Shock Phenomena of Cloud Costs Part 2: Top 5 Workloads that are NOT Well Suited for the Cloud Part 3: Top 5 Reasons Why Clients Are Repatriating Workloads Introduction In today’s installment, we’ll discuss the Top 5 Price Shock Phenomena of Cloud Costs. Price Shock is a phenomenon that occurs when ...

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Act Now and Stop Overpaying Salesforce: Market Update

Salesforce has led the market for years. We have pointed to Salesforce as the culprit who broke the early promise of software as a service as (SaaS). SaaS was supposed to be elastic with demand allowing costs to go both up and down. Historically, we know that Salesforce is supportive of increases in their customers' cost but it has been punitive to reductions. With Salesforce’s fiscal year-end coming at the end of January 2023, now is a great time to re-evaluate your deployment and at the very least benchmark to see how your spend compares to the market. But first, more on Salesforce themselves…. Things 'they are a changin' in ...

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Taking the Spin Out of Oracle’s “Growth” and What It Really Costs You

As we are well into calendar Q4, several tech companies have announced layoffs and cutbacks as they prepare to weather inflation and the impending recession storm. Despite all the great news coming out of Oracle from their Q1 2023 report (announced September 12, 2022), they have been laying off employees throughout the course of 2022 on the heels of their Cerner acquisition in their quest to cut $1B in cost in the name of synergy. Somewhat surprising to us; however, is that they are also laying off from their OCI group (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure). Given their claims of robust cloud growth that they talk about to Wall Street in their Q1 ...

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What is Your Cloud Migration Readiness?

A rigorous assessment of the business objectives and a well-defined migration plan are critical to realize the benefits of moving IT activities from your legacy on-premises infrastructure to a public cloud provider. Any technical gap or delay in cloud migration will erode the economics and benefits of the cloud with unexpected expenses and performance issues. To that point, a recent survey by SunGard Availability Services uncovered the following: Over 45% of IT decision-makers indicate they struggle to forecast and understand the costs associated with cloud migration. 40% of respondents cited they ‘lack understanding of cloud architecture ...

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Europe’s Growing Energy Crisis and the Impact to Your Cloud Capacity & Pricing

There is a growing energy crisis in Europe that may have a significant impact on availability and pricing soon for consumers of cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft and Google. With an ongoing war in Ukraine and green energy policies taking effect all over Europe, the pressure on energy has never been greater. And with a supply that could be constricted coupled with growing demand, may equal a business risk for you. The big three customers may take all that on-demand capacity for granted, but those days may be numbered. As French President Macron recently underscored, “We are no longer living in a world of abundance.” Supplies for every ...

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NetSuite in The Modern Enterprise

Introduction Increasingly, we are seeing NetSuite encroach into the enterprise space. What was once thought of as a web-based mini-ERP for SMBs is now a serious platform contender for major organizations. NetSuite Customers Companies such as Accenture, Audi, Bearing Point, The Boston Globe, Ceridian, Cornerstone, Kronos, Nestlé, Siemens, SoftwareAG, Solar Winds, T-Mobile, Tableau, and Wells Fargo all use NetSuite. NetSuite claims to be the #1 Cloud-based ERP, offering a unified suite of web-based applications that encompasses HR, ERP, CRM, SCM, PSA, eCommerce, Marketing Automation, and Financials, among other areas. As a cloud-native ...

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Act Now: Snowflake Fiscal Year End is January

The Rise of the Consumption-Based Pricing Model One thing is clear in 2022: The technology industry is moving away from per user per month subscription models and moving towards consumption-based pricing models, and it’s no wonder why. With the ability to capture value from all customer consumption, the revenue-capture and resulting earnings of firms like Snowflake have significantly outpaced even the most successful subscription-based companies, and this is pushing enterprise valuations into a completely new stratosphere, providing ample incentive for technology suppliers to migrate towards consumption-based pricing models. Executives like ...

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12 for '21 Cloud Optimization Series: Number 11 - Storage Management

Cloud spend is anticipated to continue its massive growth trajectory for the foreseeable future. However, the spend does not have to match that same growth curve! To help our Clients maintain sound Cloud Optimization programs, we've assembled a series of articles and tips called: 12 for '21 Cloud Optimization Series (note: request a download of all 21 here). Today we review the fourth installment in the series: Set Up Hierarchical Storage Management. Data sets have specific lifecycles. Early on, your workload might often access the data. But overtime, data access, in particular the aging one, drops drastically. Some data remains idle in the ...

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5 Q4 Sales Strategies Technology Suppliers Use Against You - Updated!

‘The Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ is a popular holiday song and was written by Edward Pola and George Wyle in 1963. It was popularized in North America by singer Andy Williams that same year on his television show by the same name. However, we didn’t have to do much research to learn that the inspiration for that song had nothing to do with the 4th quarter for most business leaders and their respective companies. Anecdotally, we believe most business leaders might say it’s the most *stressful* time of the year, especially for publicly traded companies – most of whom have their fiscal year end aligned with the calendar year end of ...

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