Platte River Networks "Intuition" Was Just Right about Managed Cloud Services
Platte River Networks is taking their clients into the cloud with an innovative combination of managed and cloud services built around a consistent approach to understanding their clients’ needs, implementing the solution, and delivering a high level of service and support.
Background
Platte River Networks (PRN) was founded in 2002 by Treve Suazo, CEO, and Brent Allshouse, CFO. The technology consulting firm is based in Denver, Colorado with clients located both locally and nationally. Strategically located in downtown Denver, PRN is poised for growth within the city's rapidly growing business community.
PRN is a both a Microsoft Silver Certified Partner and a Microsoft Small Business Specialist and has an extensive list of certifications from leading technology companies including VMware and Citrix. PRN is also a member of the Ingram Micro Venture Tech Network and the Ingram Micro Cloud Services Advisory Council. The company is actively involved in the Denver business community and was named Small Business of the Year in 2012 by the Denver Chamber of Commerce. PRN was also recognized by CRN as one of the top 250 Next Generation Service Providers.
The Challenge
David DeCamillis, director of business development, joined PRN in 2008 and was charged with growing the company’s cloud services business. As an established managed services provider, PRN was already managing and monitoring their clients’ servers and desktops. They understood the value that remote management and monitoring delivered to their clients.
DeCamillis’ challenge was to bring PRN’s offerings together, build out a complete suite of services, and get them to market. "In order for us to have a successful cloud practice, the entire team needed to embrace our cloud strategy," says DeCamillis. "Our solution stack and our bundle of services had to meet the needs of our current and prospective clients."
He needed the right vendor partner along with the right processes to sell, deliver and support the offering. The partner needed to align with PRN and to be committed to making them successful.
The Solution
The solution DeCamillis and the PRN team developed resulted in major changes in the way the company sold and marketed its services. First, they needed the right bundle of services priced competitively. Second, they needed to educate their staff and clients to ensure there was buy-in on the new offering and the business model.
The solution that was born from their efforts is called "Intuition" - a bundle of managed and cloud services that deliver monitoring, managing, and reporting for a client’s on-premise infrastructure. This solution combined with Intermedia’s robust suite of hosted services including Exchange, VoIP, Lync, SharePoint, and Backup made for an unbeatable offering.
"We talked with our distribution partner, Ingram Micro, did some of our own due diligence, and selected Intermedia as our partner for Exchange and collaboration services," says DeCamillis. "It was a great decision and we are considering expanding our offering with additional services like Intermedia’s Hosted PBX offering."
Intuition also includes a systematic and consistent process for delivering the solution to clients. It is a five step process starting with a discovery phase to determine how the client uses technology and what processes are in place. Then there is an analysis phase that identifies inefficiencies and problem areas and determines what the best solutions are. A recommendation is then presented and approved by the client prior to implementation. Step five is focused on on-going support and incremental changes that may be needed from time-to-time.
"Our goal is to deliver the right bundle of services to our customer, combined with world class support at a price that fits their needs," says Treve Suazo, CEO and one of PRN’s founders. "Intermedia’s diverse cloud services portfolio enables us to construct a bundled package that meet the needs of our customer – on a customer-by-customer basis"
The Results
Twenty-five percent of PRN’s business is now built around cloud services and it is growing rapidly. The team knows that cloud services are a differentiator for them and helps thm deliver the best possible solution, service and support to their clients. PRN is continuing to expand their offering and is actively working in vertical markets that include legal, medical, manufacturing and education. The prediction is that in the next 6 -12 months over 100 clients will be migrated to the Intuition solution.
Stephen Sparn Architects, PC (SSArchitects), a PRN client, is a team of Boulder, Colorado architects, planners, builders and developers who has delivered innovative planning and design solutions in Colorado for more than 30 years. When it came time to replace the firm’s aging on-premise Exchange server the obvious answer was to add Intermedia’s hosted Exchange bundle to the Intuition solution. "It was a great solution for our company," says Sparn, the firm’s principle architect. "It turned what could have been a substantial capital expense into an operating expense and provided us the cutting edge technology that we needed to run our business. We are confident that we made the right decision for our business."