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Billions & Billions of eyeballs, six continents, 10k+ servers, and plenty of lessons learned over 2+ decades in IT. If you're looking for quick tips on optimizing tech, managing suppliers, and growing a business, 20 Minutes Max is the space for you.
Join me as I talk about things that come up during my day and share insights on taking your business to the next level. In less than 20 minutes, you'll walk away with actionable advice and strategies for success. Take advantage of this valuable resource for CEOs, CFOs, and business leader.
Hi. Max Clark. I'm gonna talk about cloud service providers AKA CSPs and an unexpected benefit of using 1 and why you probably want 1. CSP is a relatively new term. You know, everything has to be branded in tech.
Speaker 1:So we have MSPs, managed services providers. You have MSSPs, managed security service providers. And, of course, with cloud services, we have cloud service providers, CSPs. So a CSP you know, and by the way, there's lots of different types of CSPs. There's CSPs that specialize in helping you with AWS or with Azure or with GCP or with, you know I mean, shoot, Salesforce.
Speaker 1:Right? It's technically a cloud platform. You can get a CSP that specializes in Salesforce. And we have CSPs that specialize and and help our clients with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. So you're like, ah, what do I need help with with Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace?
Speaker 1:And, well, the first thing, you actually do need a lot of help with these platforms. You just don't realize it until you get to the point where you're like, holy smokes. I actually do need a lot of help with these things. There's a lot of configuration. There's a lot of management.
Speaker 1:If you're on 365, you start talking about how are you using, you know, SharePoint, for instance. SharePoint is an animal. Like, it's an amazing piece of software. It's incredible tech. It is an animal in functionality.
Speaker 1:How are you rolling it out? How are you using it? How are you securing it? Who has access to what? I mean, like, in in itself.
Speaker 1:Right? You need a CSP just for SharePoint. So CSPs will do a bunch of different things for you. They will do rollout. They'll do migrations.
Speaker 1:They'll do management. They'll do configuration. They'll do administration. You know, like, hey. You've got x amount of users.
Speaker 1:You have a 1,000 users. Right? Any any given day, if you have a 1,000 users, how many of these users need to reset a password? Like, let's do a really basic one. Ask your IT team to give you a report out of your ticketing system, like, how many password resets did you have in the last month?
Speaker 1:Right? And now is that something that you wanna be using your IT team's limited resources doing? Oh, like, I actually wanna staff a desk just to do password resets. Really basic example, but hopefully that connects and, you know, the visualization and the associations there for you. So CSPs actually will staff a tier one help desk for you.
Speaker 1:You know, something that you get with the CSP is, you know, phone number, email address, chat, whatever the mechanism is. You can call in and do authentication, and they can do that tier one help desk for you and then escalate into your actual on-site team or your actual internal team, for other things. Right? Okay. Great.
Speaker 1:Simple example. Really nice. CSPs are wonderful for this kind of stuff. Now just scale up, of course, you know, 10,000 users, 20,000 users. By the way, you've got a lot of stuff going on.
Speaker 1:But I started this off talking about, like, the benefit of CSP and why you should use one that you probably don't even realize. And the answer for that is is the CSP has access to your environment as an administrator and can help you when bad things happen and things get locked out. About a year ago, I got a phone call from a friend of mine, and she had a business acquaintance. And he had what always happens where you click on a link, and the link turns out to not be good. And he was the admin.
Speaker 1:He owned the company. Right? So so, you know, smaller SMB. And because he owned the company, he'd set up the account originally when he started the business, and he had admin rights to the environment. You've got the same issue.
Speaker 1:Don't lie. And he got locked out of his account. He got locked out of his 365 account. He got locked out of his email. He got locked out of his OneDrive.
Speaker 1:He got locked out of a SharePoint. Now imagine trying to run a business where you're the owner of the company and you can't communicate with your clients or your employees, and you also can't get access to any of your data, your financial models, your finest data, your project I mean, like, everything is just poof, gone. Right? Big issue. And also, by the way, you can't reset it because you can't get access, and then you start calling Microsoft and you find out you don't actually get support from Microsoft.
Speaker 1:I'm serious. Like, if you wanna experiment, open a ticket with Microsoft, open a ticket with Google. Like, try to get, like, support. Something benign. Ask a basic question to something.
Speaker 1:Just just go through the experience of getting support from these organizations. I'm not picking fun of them. I'm gonna tell you the reality of what it's like to have 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of accounts on a platform and what you actually can do for those at scale. I mean, I don't care if you've got 5,000 people, by the way. I would be shocked if Google Workspace had 5,000 people doing end user support because my experience with them is just that that's not the case.
Speaker 1:Anyways, he went through a really painful process to get back into his environment and get access to data, and he was very lucky where he didn't lose anything and didn't have any issues as a result of it. Usually, what happens with these things is they go crazy, and they email everybody you know and try to commit fraud and do all these other things and try to get into your bank accounts and and didn't have that impact, fortunately, but it was still a very painful process to to and he was lucky, actually. Let's be really honest here. He was lucky he was able to get back into his Microsoft account. Now in the case of the CSP, because you have now an organization sitting on top of you that has access to your environment, has admin rights.
Speaker 1:If a CSP was engaged, some and and what I told him after the fact, you know, was just let's get you a CSP here that can help you add in this stuff and protect it and secure it, maintain it, and and support your users and all these other benefits that you get out of it. But, really, the the main thing here was this can't happen to you again because that CSP can just go, oh, like, click password reset, change your password, and, you know, and and and get you back access. And, also, you have a support organization that exists to help you with this environment. There's different bill billing models for CSPs. Really depends on what you're asking them to do for you.
Speaker 1:If you're doing tier 1 end user support, you're gonna have a different financial relationship with that CSP as if they're just acting as a reseller and doing basic admin support. So there's scales within these things. It And it And it's a phenomenal by accidental benefit that you get out of the CSP. If you're not using a CSP, get a CSP. If you need help finding the CSP, email me.
Speaker 1:I will introduce you to 1. No biggie. You know? Like, there's lots of them. They focus on different things.
Speaker 1:They focus on different sizes. They have different, you know, add on benefits. There's all these different things that come with it. The one of the the moral of the story here is if you're not engaged with the CSP because you don't need one, I am telling you the benefit outweighs whatever mental block is going on about it. And you should really start talking to them and really understand what they can do for you and how they can help you scale and create leverage for your business in addition to being able to protect you in the case that something really bad happens to your admin account and you lose access to your everything and you wanna get back to it.
Speaker 1:Anyways, I'm Max Clark. I hope this helps you. If you have questions, comment below. Reach out. Happy to talk.
Speaker 1:Happy to help.