Azure Monitoring Service

The Azure Monitoring Service monitors your client's Azure environment so they don’t have to, ensuring they stay secure, compliant and right-sized for their future growth and development.

This page gives you an overview of the service and the key information you need to book a demo with Mark T. The service is a solution-sell that needs to be focused and pitched according to the customer's requirements, so a demo is essential.

Sales Tips & Customer Stories

Before you start:

  1. Knowing your customer’s business, commercial and technical objectives, plus their current situation, is key. If you know your customer you can position the service effectively.
  2. This is a solution sell, it's not a line item you can just quote. Ask open, probing questions.
  3. Taking a benefit-led approach is more effective than starting with features or jumping straight into the technically specifications.
  4. The pitch to secure a demo can be relatively short so add in as part of a general conversation. It doesn’t need to be a specific call – if you know your customer and their objectives/pain-points, you can weave it into any relevant conversation.

Things you should know about your customer:

  1. What does the business do.
  2. Who are their customers - names are great but industry will do.
  3. Do those customers have specific expectations - e.g. if their customers are in a regulated market such as finance or healthcare, compliance is critical. If your customer (or their customers) is a well-known brand their reputation and therefore security is vital. The service helps both types.
  4. Do they make any claims about uptime, security or resilience? If so, ask how they adhere to them.
  5. What growth stage is the business at? If they're growing, they may want their dev team focused on their product not their infrastructure. If it's a mature business, they may have customer SLAs or additional compliance requirements. This service helps in both scenarios.

Questions you can use to start the conversation:

  • How do you monitor your Azure environment?
  • How do you handle 247/365 critical alerts?
  • Do you have to adhere to SLAs for your customers?
  • What compliance standards do you have to meet for you customers?

A quick story...
One client works with top-flight sports clubs, including Premiership football clubs, to provide ticket booking and management services. One Saturday morning they has 75k new users trying to sign up in 10 minutes. They weren’t expecting it and hadn’t set the right elasticity and their booking application fell over. We saw the problem in a matter of minutes, jumped in and fixed the problem. They were down for 25 minutes in total.

Target Audience - companies and people

Companies to target - if they...

  1. Are in Azure on our CSP or are willing to migrate to us
  2. Spending £1k+ per month on Azure consumption
  3. Have a small tech team and/or aren't certified in Azure Infrastructure
  4. Have a large team and want them focused on their product/s or business growth rather than the infrastructure that supports it
  5. Deploy infrastructure to Azure
  6. Have large applications designed for an on-prem environment and that haven’t been optimised for the cloud
  7. Have ambitious growth targets for the company and need the infrastructure to support it
  8. Recognise the importance of monitoring and alerting on you IT infrastructure
  9. Must adhere to any compliance regulations (e.g. ISO, SOC)
  10. Have customer SLAs in place (e.g. up-time, reporting)
  11. Have an internal workforce accessing applications hosted in Azure
  12. Have remote workers accessing applications hosted in Azure

People:

  1. Senior commercial decision makers e.g. founders, CEO, COO, MDs - lead with business benefits then technical benefits
  2. Senior technical decision makers e.g. CTO, Head of IT - lead with technical benefits and back up with business benefits

Service summaries

You can use the following service descriptions when discussing the service with your customers. There's an email you can use here but only send this once you've spoken to your customer and know their challenges.

Short:  

It will help you optimise your Azure infrastructure, make compliance easier and hopefully save you money in the process.

Long: 

Our Azure Monitoring Service continually monitors your Azure environment so that you don’t have to. The service covers key areas - resources, security and cost - and goes far beyond the standard Azure Advisor reporting.

We continuously monitor your Azure environment to ensure that it is resilient to modern day threats, as well as ensuring maximum uptime. If an issue does occur, we will manage the situation from start to resolution. The service also monitors your environment for compliance across a range of industry standards and advises on any actions needed to meet them. Each month you will receive a report that details issues experienced and suggested actions to be undertaken to ensure the service is efficient and robust.

It is available at two different levels – Business and Enterprise – so you can choose the right one for you. The Enterprise level package includes out-of-hours support and time with our Microsoft-certified engineers and architects.

Business Benefits

Prevention is better than cure: reduces potential for downtime, improves resilience and performance of Azure infrastructure

Save time: we proactively monitor your Azure environment so you don't need to spend time understanding what's happening and what needs improving or resolving.

Maximise ROI: we'll ensure your entire Azure estate is optimised for maximum performance at the right size and cost, giving you the best possible ROI.

100% clarity: you'll get to see how everything is working (or not) so you have 100% clarity on what's happening with your Azure infrastructure.

Focus on business growth and your core product or service: becoming an Azure expert takes time and money, and for most businesses that distracts them from their core business. The Azure Monitoring Service will help you focus on what you do best.

Peace of mind: whether it's meeting security standards, compliance requirements or customer SLAs, with our Azure Monitoring Service you'll have peace of mind that your Azure infrastructure is running as it should.

Technical Benefits and Features

Delivered by both versions (Business and Enterprise):

  1. Total clarity: A ‘Single pane of glass’ visibility of your Azure Estate, measured against the 5 pillars of well architected framework. It scores your infrastructure, highlights vulnerabilities and provides recommendations for improvement
  2. Live reporting: Bespoke real-time alerting monitored using our helpdesk staffed by trained technicians for SevA, SevB, and SevC issues.
  3. Expert recommendations:  Our MS-certified Architects and Engineers provide bespoke and actionable recommendations for improvements.
  4. Compliance monitoring: Ensure compliance against any combination of the following security industry standards and provide actionable advice on how to ensure standards are met:
    1. SOC TSP
    2. PCI DSS 3.2.1
    3. ISO 27001
    4. UKO and UK NHS
    5. NIST SP 800-53 R4/NIST SP800 171 R2
    6. HIPAA HITRUST

Additional Enterprise only benefits and features:

  • Regular reviews and assessments: Point-in-time Azure Health Checks conducted every six months at no additional cost.
  • 24/7 Alerts: monitoring through our Helpdesk using certified engineers Our Azure-certified engineers.
  • Faster fixes: We fix the problems for you - seven hours of Engineer time are included every month.
  • On-hand support: Regular access to our team of certified engineers and architects.

Service Levels & Pricing

Business

For those that have some Azure skills in-house and/or have important applications running in Azure but don’t need 24/7 coverage.

Costs:

  • £200 plus 20% of Azure spend per month.
  • Mandatory Azure Health Check at the start of the service - £1,250 rather than the standard £2,495.

Enterprise

For organisations with business-critical applications in Azure. Enterprise includes 24/7 support for Sev A issues and engineering time to resolve (seven hours per month). Enterprise also includes an Azure Health Check at the start and after six months at no additional cost.

Costs:

  • £1,500 plus 10% of Azure spend per month.
  • Azure Health Check at start and after six months - no additional costs, saving £2,495.

Please be aware:

  1. If the customer is spending £10k+ per month, Enterprise is significantly better value. For an extra £300 per month, they get 24/7 coverage and seven hours of engineering time per month.
  2. If the customer is spending £15k+ per month, Enterprise has a lower monthly cost than Business (£3.5k v £4.2k).
  3. If the customer is spending £35k+ per month and has a modernised estate we can look at bespoke banded pricing. This is on a case-by-case basis.

Quick pricing calculator.

Business  Enterprise 
Monthly spend  Fee % Total Fee % Total
 £                 1,000   £         200  £           200  £           400  £     1,500  £        100  £    1,600
 £                 5,000   £         200  £        1,000  £        1,200  £     1,500  £        500  £    2,000
 £               10,000   £         200  £        2,000  £        2,200  £     1,500  £    1,000 £    2,500
 £               15,000   £         200  £        3,000  £        3,200  £     1,500  £    1,500  £    3,000
 £               20,000   £         200  £        4,000  £        4,200  £     1,500  £    2,000  £    3,500 
 £               25,000   £         200  £        5,000  £        5,200  £     1,500  £    2,500  £    4,000
 £               30,000   £         200  £        6,000  £        6,200  £     1,500  £    3,000  £    4,500
 £               40,000   £         200  £        8,000  £        8,200  £     1,500  £    4,000  £    5,500

Follow up email

Only send an email once you've spoken to your client. You can make small amends to the below so it's specific to their requirements but don't make major edits or additions without speaking to Mark T or James R first. If you come up with a genius suggestion we'll add it in so everyone can benefit.

--

Hi [name],

Thanks for your time just now, it was good to talk to you about our Azure Monitoring Service.

You asked for more information on the service which you can find here, but in particular I’d like to highlight the following key benefits:

  1. Resource optimisation: ensure you’ve got the right resources in the right configuration as and when you need them.
  2. Security assessments: receive continuous assessments of your security configuration with suggested enhancements.
  3. Compliance recommendations: understand where you are against industry standards (inc. ISO 27001, HIPAA HITRUST, PCI DSS 3.2.1) and what you need to do to meet them.
  4. Real-world guidance: monthly reports with guidance and recommendations from our Azure engineers and architects.
  5. 24/7 support: choose if you’d like 24/7 support for Severity A issues.

If you would like more detailed information or have further questions, I suggest we set up a call with our Head of Professional Services, Mark Trippier. Mark designed the service along with our Azure engineers so is best placed to answer any technical questions.

I’ll give you a few days to digest everything and then call to discuss next steps.

Many thanks.

--

Process and Checklist

When you have a qualified demo:

  1. Book a demo - submit a ticket in the normal way and include the information listed below. Getting this information upfront makes everyone's lives easier and increase your chance of closing a sale.
  2. Average lead time from order to onboarding is 4-6 weeks.

Information required for ticket submission (spoiler alert: you'll be asked for this before a demo so save yourself some time and get it all in one go).

Technical

  1. What is their subscription name(s) and ID(s) that they would like monitored
  2. What types of applications and services do they host in Azure
  3. How many IT staff do they have
    1. Infrastructure and Networking
      1. Dev
  4. What was their Azure consumption
    1. Last month
    2. 6 months ago
    3. 12 months ago
  5. What is their reported turnover
  6. Do they have infrastructure in any other locations
    1. On-prem
    2. Co-location hosted infrastructure
    3. Azure infrastructure
  7. Do they currently use monitoring applications for any of the following (if yes what)
    1. On-prem
    2. Co-location hosted infrastructure
    3. Azure infrastructure
  8. Do they have any compliance requirements
  9. Do they offer SLAs to their clients
  10. Have they had any incidents that have caused downtime
  11. How do they currently monitor and manage their Azure infrastructure

Business

  1. What is their main reason(s) for interest in AMS
  2. Who will be present on the demo - name and job title,
  3. Role in decision - Decision Maker, Influencer or Stakeholder
  4. Is this an immediate requirement
    1. 0-1 month
    2. 1-3 months
    3. 3-6 months
  5. Which version do you think they would be most interested in purchasing – Enterprise or Business
  6. What information have you provided them to date
    1. Website link
    2. Full Service Description PDF that includes pricing

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