HITT- Introduction to the Telarus Cloud Launchpad Toolkit – 8.18.26

I’m really excited, and we didn’t get into this specifically at Partner Summit. But I am very excited today to announce our Cloud Launchpad. And what we’re gonna discuss today is something that will hopefully benefit all of you because it is a a bunch of resources that we’ll go through today and what’s outlined in there. But it’s also what I consider a living document.

So it’s it’s part of the Telarus University, part of the Telarus Hub. But what it will be is an ongoing situation where as new wins come in, we’re gonna put them in here for you to utilize, for you to brand and put out, and help you begin to leverage all of the resources in Telarus to be able to grab what you need, when you need it, to address the specific customers, the specific verticals, and and all the different conversations, as well as make sure that you have access to our amazing solution engineering team too to help you through those difficult conversations. So the Cloud Launchpad is really your toolkit for mastering cloud conversations.

You’re gonna see this a lot. You’re gonna see it also across our different advanced solution verticals, meaning that we’re going to be able to have this not only for cloud, but you’re gonna see it for advanced networking, IoT, mobility. You’re gonna see it for AI. You’re gonna see it for CX, and you’re gonna see it for cybersecurity.

So this is, really exciting for me. I’ve put a ton of time in this along with our marketing team and some specific folks, in the background here that have helped really put this together to be a great tool for you all to use. So without further ado, we’re gonna step through this today. I am not going to take you to the website, but, Chandler, you can go to the next slide here, and we’ll we’ll introduce this.

I’m gonna leave the website. It’s it’s here in the chat. It’ll be listed again as I come to a close very shortly here. But we want you to utilize this, but I wanna explain what it’s all about first and how to utilize it.

And then, again, as always, with any of my conversations here today on the Tuesday call, throw your questions in the chat. I’m gonna answer them as best I can live. If there’s anything that I need to follow-up on afterwards, I’m happy to do that with each of you too. So what is this?

What is the Cloud Launchpad? So this is specifically designed to be housed in the Telarus University because it does offer a lot of training for you, for your employees, anybody in the partner community to utilize. But it’s also a group of resources in addition to trainings. So it is not just pure trainings.

It is customizable marketing. It is, the ability to stay on the front cutting edge of technology specific in the cloud space. And what we wanted to do is build this so that you can go directly to it. And, again, this is gonna be copied for for several advanced solution categories too, but this is the cloud one, which is the most important in my opinion.

So, again, we built this in the hub through Telarus University as well to master the cloud conversations and to help your knowledge of all aspects of cloud, whether it be private, hybrid, public cloud, data center, colocation, those two things are separating as we’ll see here in future conversations that I bring to the table over the next couple of months on the Tuesday call as well. But everything you need to have a great cloud conversation, whether it’s on the SMB side or whether it’s on the enterprise side, is here for you to grab the resources and be prepared to have those conversations.

We want you to sell smarter. So the marketing aspect of this has customizable pitch decks for you, discovery guides for all different shapes and sizes of customers that you’re gonna be dealing with. Again, SMB, mid market, and enterprise are all there and available for you to download, customize, and be able to step in front of your customer and walk through a basic cloud conversation with them.

The, the other thing too that we’re going to integrate into this that you’ve heard throughout this entire year is the outcome based selling, leveraging MEDDPIC. So this directly in Telarus University directly connects through to that MEDDPIC and outcome based selling courses that we offer as well that are no charge to you and your employees as well.

We want you to learn, and we want you to grow, and we want you to become comfortable in offering these solutions specifically in and around cloud. So the learning aspect of this is on demand. We understand that you may not have time during your eight to five, eight to six, whatever your day looks like from a work standpoint. But sometimes at night, it may get quiet, and you may have twenty, thirty minutes to invest in doing a course or one of the offerings that’s that’s here from one of our cloud suppliers as well. So we wanted this to be able to have on demand courses, be able to, have you learn in the way and the manner that you learn best so that we’re not driving this forward.

One of the key things here in cloud is understanding some of some of the the wording, the acronyms, all that type of thing. Tech loves its acronyms as we’re all aware. So there’s a bunch of them, obviously, in the cloud space too, but also understanding, the differentiators between private cloud. What is private cloud versus public cloud versus a hybrid cloud?

And those of you that attended, my last, my last talk and education session last week, we went through that. And we went through how to differentiate what your customer may need and how it fits their needs in placing them in a private, public, or hybrid cloud solution depending on what their vertical is as far as their business goes and also what their needs are from a day to day basis. And then probably one of the most important things in the Cloud Launchpad is your access to our experts. This is one of the things that we want to be able to make sure you have access to the experts, are the solution engineering team, myself and and my colleagues in the in the advanced solutions VP team, to be able to come alongside of you and have those technical conversations that you may not have a comfort level with.

And that’s okay because you have a whole team of experts here at Telarus that will come alongside of you and help you through each step of the way, whether it’s just getting the the deal registered, whether it’s the technical or super technical in some instances, conversations in and around cloud and workloads and Kubernetes and all the different things that pop up in cloud that you may know nothing about, we’re here to support you. We’re here to walk through it step by step alongside of you to make sure you not only win the deal, but you help grow that customer over time. One of the key factors before we go to the next slide that I wanna highlight specific to cloud is there’s typically over a three year contract, over a forty percent growth rate in cloud year over year over year.

And the reason why is the data never stops growing. There’s always data being added to cloud, and that data continues to grow. And while the services may plateau, the growth in storage continue to grow year over year, and that equates to, in most instances, a forty plus percent, growth over the contract term. I said year over year.

I meant over the contract term. So that’s something that’s, really beneficial, especially as you look at, you know, bringing cloud in alongside of CX and some of the other network things that maybe a lot of you are a little bit more comfortable in selling. So what we are are looking to do and let’s go to the next slide here, Chandler. What we’re looking to do is go through this on a on a step by step here.

I’ve got about fifteen minutes left that I wanna kinda talk you through each portion of this and then be able to direct you to the website that each of you can access and do this now.

Paul, I love the idea, of being able to, you know, potentially ultimately customize some of the the university videos.

If it is Telarus content, we can typically help you with that. But it again, there’s a lot that goes into that. So we have to be careful of of proprietary stuff, whether there’s a supplier involved in that or not. But we we do share that mindset with you. So we will be looking at adding that into it.

I think and then, Rick, yours.

The question was, do you see on prem infrastructure pricing and availability driving more hybrid and public cloud adoption? Yes. So before I jump into the sales side of things, from a market structure in cloud right now, overall, private and public cloud is exploding because of what Rick mentioned here, the lack of availability of hardware for customers to do their own upgrades and support it themselves. That’s being scooped up by specifically the AI space.

Chips and memory, you’ve heard me say time and time again, are unavailable for over a year now. So it’s a year out. If customers need to make upgrades, it’s it’s being pushed out dramatically. And the costs are are four x what they were even six months ago. So all of that to be said, now is the time to really hone in, as we go into wrapping up the third quarter and looking at fourth quarter of this year, closing out twenty twenty six. Let’s make it the year of the cloud.

And how to do that is leveraging our sales and marketing toolkit on the Launchpad here. These are ready to use assets that help you shorten the timeline and shorten the ability to have to create things on your own. You can literally drop your logos on this and go same day or the next day, be able to present to your customer on multiple different cloud topics here. So what it is is it’s an outcome focused pitch deck, a customer leave behind, all of this branded to you so that you can step into the meeting and be able to present on a step by step basis very, very well. Also present remotely and then send the deck off to the customer afterwards.

We have three part discovery guides. So it helps you structure what information you need to gather based on what the customer’s needs are and the size and scope of what that customer is looking to do. It’s a structured conversation that allows you to progress from very basic cloud questions all the way up to enterprise level strategy. And that enterprise level strategy, I would highly encourage leveraging the team internally here at Telarus to walk you through that.

I know most of the people for whoever was, attending last week’s partner summit, the the top ten partners that were up on stage heavily utilize the Telarus team from a from a solution engineering and ASVP level. So that shows you that you have access to that same team and be able to to sell into markets, again, that you may not be as comfortable with. We’re here to help you make those sales successful. And the final thing is what all of you, I think, want are marketing campaigns.

How do I get a door open to talk about cloud? Well, what we’ve done is outlined an entire marketing campaign for you. We call it a campaign in a box, and it is everything that’s listed here from LinkedIn templates, email, drip campaigns, video scripts, everything that’s needed to to help generate a pipeline and to help maintain that pipeline, keep it active and engaged until you can set the meeting and be in front of them. So one of the key things that we we are looking to do is again, this is this is the first step to many.

So, Shareef, your question there, I love that idea of having a bot. I think it’s on the road map, and I think it would be a great thing to to be able to utilize to have you be able to have that on your website, questions, answers, all that type of thing. We are looking to continually improve this. So this is step one as we get towards the end of the year.

And those of you that that saw Josh on stage, Josh Lupresto on stage present about the tools and everything that we’re doing to improve hub, etcetera, all of this is moving towards an AI interaction, the ability to query the hub, the Telarus University, etcetera. So all of this is moving in that direction. This is step one, again, to get the information out there and usable for you all and continue to add to it as your needs change.

Moving moving to the next slide.

The the cloud expertise level. So we want you not only to be able to learn about cloud, but we want you to sell it with confidence. We want you to be equipped with the knowledge at least to have the basic conversations at multiple different levels and multiple different verticals to be able to understand what the basics of of a cloud conversation look like, feel like, and are when you’re talking to your customer. So, again, we have a fundamentals course that goes over cloud concepts, the terminology, as I mentioned before, all the wonderful acronyms that are thrown at you.

It takes you through that step by step, and it allows you to be able to expand on what is happening and what is going on. And these are updated as well. So as the cloud market changes, we are updating these trainings and everything to be able to stay in front of the cloud marketplace. So the whole idea here is to equip you and keep you equipped as the conversations change and as the cloud marketplace evolves out there with your customers.

The outcome based selling, it’s a three part learning path for not only qualifying, but run running, enterprise and really any level deal. But what the nice thing is, and we’ve talked about it time and time again, is outcome based selling helps you very quickly understand not just a specific line item or SKU that the customer needs and say, yes. I can I can offer that? It’s the total outcome.

What is the customer looking for now? And outcome based selling allows you to address how the customer is now buying because no longer is it a conversation with the IT guy or the phone guy anymore. It is purchased by committee. So you’re dealing with the owner or the CEO.

You’re dealing with a finance person. You’re dealing with a sales and or marketing person. It’s a group of people that are now making these buying decisions in and around technology. And this outcome based selling in MEDDPIC course helps you not only understand who the buyers are involved in this decision, but also helps you quickly qualify or eliminate whether this is a good lead or not a good lead based on all the indicators that are happening there.

So I think it’s it’s a very, very important first step, and I would encourage all of you to start with that outcome based selling in MEDDPIC three step phase. And I think what we really, really wanna do is drive that home so that it becomes just muscle memory in your brain. And you’re thinking about it, and you’re like, oh, did I check this box? Check this box?

Check this box. No longer do you have to have the little pen and paper to do that. It just becomes innate. It becomes something that you do in involving every single deal, and you will see those deals get very quickly qualified in your mind or very quickly kicked out.

And that’s the whole goal behind this is to be able to really focus on the deals that are legit and move the ones that aren’t or are gonna be a time suck to the back of the list for you.

The cloud sales playbook, again, this is this is just a playbook specifically designed in and around cloud that is repeatable. Just like the MEDDPIC process and outcome based selling, the cloud sales playbook is specific to the cloud practice, and it helps you take what you’ve learned in the outcome based selling and MEDDPIC side of it and apply it specifically to the cloud marketplace. It will leverage everything that you’ve learned in and in and around cloud, whether it be the general concepts of it, the terminology, the specific offerings in the Telarus portfolio from our suppliers and be able to merge both the outcome based selling and the cloud sales book together to confidently get in front of your customers and have a a basic conversation in and around cloud that you don’t have to worry about necessarily coming in as the expert.

And then the last thing here, which, again, all of you are probably sick of hearing me talk about, but, you got till October of next year, till till you till I stop talking about it, which is the v VMware. I think it’s something that we have a a situation that is that has timelines around it. There are some major changes happening. My last hit call, I harped on this again.

But the VMware impact and strategy is not just let’s move away from VMware. A lot of times, it’s let’s stay with VMware. I did a presentation, and I wanna use a real world example here. I did a presentation with eleven eleven, at Partner Summit last week, and it is one that will stick in my brain for a long time to come.

Those of you that know Mac from eleven eleven, he’s a fantastic resource.

And what I did was we we presented on a customer win. This customer conversation started out it was a manufacturing company that had VMware, and their head of IT was really, really key in getting rid of, VMware. They wanted out. He he used a ton of expletives.

He essentially was threatening the lives of VMware people indirectly, all of the things. He hated what Broadcom had done to VMware. And we were ready to end the conversation and walk away and go, well, thank you for your time, you know, with eleven eleven. I think, you know, this our time is done here.

And Mac, in his infinite wisdom, said, hey. You know what? I think what we need to do is, if you would be open to it, and I could take everything that you’re dealing with on prem right now with VMware and put that into a managed cloud solution for you and be able to keep your cost steady, not have a giant increase, all of that, would would that be of interest, or or am I just wasting my time? And it went from I hate everything VMware, Broadcom to, yeah, that sounds great.

Let’s have a let let’s have a conversation about that. So the deal was won by that simple ask. Even though it was a violent hate of VMware to begin with, that customer has now transitioned over to a private cloud solution, manage their costs directly, and they couldn’t be happier. Not only that, they have a full Doctor and backup service that’s now built in under that supplier and everything else.

So those conversations are not going away. They’re gonna happen. They’re gonna happen more often. And what’s gonna drive the reengagement in the next probably sixty days is Broadcom is making another change to their cloud service provider list.

They’re taking it from fourteen down to between six and eight. So they are making a major change again that’s gonna force customers to have to make a decision on who they’re gonna go with.

I think it’s it’s really, really important for you all to focus on this, and it starts with one question to your customers and one question only. Are you using VMware right now? It’s a yes or no. If it’s a yes, great.

What are you doing about that? When does your when does your contract renew? That should be the follow-up question. First one is yes or no.

Second one is when does when does it renew? So, again, VMware is in there. We have a whole section built out in the Cloud Launchpad specific to VMware.

And I really, really would encourage you by going through starting again, just to reiterate, starting with the out outcome based selling in MEDDPIC and then layering that onto the cloud sales playbook is really gonna be your key to opening that door. And we are here again to support you through each of this. So let’s go to the next, next one here as I’m running low on time for my section.

The expert support and fresh insights. You’re never selling cloud alone. I should have highlighted that more than than what it is there. You are never selling cloud alone.

We, as the Telarus team, are here alongside of you to help you through step by step, whatever that looks like to you, whether it’s a phone call before a customer meeting, whether it’s us participating in your customer meeting and leveraging the solutions engineering team to do that, or if it’s a large enough opportunity, it’s us sitting across a table facing that customer with you saying, hey. This is what we see on the Telarus side. We see hundreds, if not thousands, of cloud opportunities a month, and this is what we see happening in the marketplace. And this is how we can help you as the partner close those deals and help drive your cloud numbers up so that you too can be on stage just like last week.

What we want is direct access to the solution engineering team. So we have dedicated engineers that are specific to the cloud practice in addition to the the general knowledge team that, in my opinion, doesn’t get enough credit. And that’s where I started. I started as just a general knowledge solution engineer for the Northeast.

Four years ago when I joined the organization here and have subsequently just continued down the cloud path to where I am today. Those generalists on the solution engineering team bring a wealth of knowledge to the table. And not only that, they have the whole mindset of land and expand. So if you’re talking about cloud here, well, cloud touches network.

Cloud also touches CX. Cloud touches security. All of those different aspects, the generalists on the SE team are honed in on expanding that conversation outside of what you typically were gonna meet for. So I think, again, leveraging that team, being able to make sure you use your salesperson to get the introduction to your regional person who’s the generalist, and then be able to leverage the team specifically with with all different areas of or all different aspects of expertise.

What we have here, specifically on the cloud team, we have infrastructure as a service architecture. So making sure that your customer can leverage that, what we refer to as bare metal or infrastructure as a service, that private cloud model, rightsizing that, making sure that they can move the workloads out of their offices, off their servers, and into an infrastructure as a service opportunity. And what does that look like and what’s involved in that. Cost optimization.

Being able to go into those customers that are leveraging Amazon Web Services or Azure or, Google Cloud.

And now, again, I’m gonna take this time, something that I did last week, but we are, at Telarus, are the only one to be able to offer IBM Cloud now on a global scale. We’re the only TSD that has that offering right now, and it is something that I’m very, very proud of. So if you have any customers that are leveraging IBM Cloud or the AI Bob that they have or anything in that in that IBM space, we have full capabilities to not only contract it, support it, and license it as well. So happy to have that.

And then the final thing is a migration strategy. What does this look like? Taking the data either out of the customer’s own servers and moving that to a private cloud or public cloud, what’s entailed in that, how not to interrupt day to day production, day to day usage, and be able to make those migrations in a timely fashion, but more importantly, in a nonbusiness interrupting fashion. That’s the key.

We are super, super proud of the of the team that we have here. We are continuing to add to it on the on the solutions engineering team. I like to refer to myself, as many of you have heard, as a recovering engineer, but I am very, very proud to have come into this company through that team and still work very closely alongside of them.

The other aspects that we have here that you’ll be able to leverage is the twenty five, twenty six tech trends report. This is something that is the latest and greatest. It was announced last week.

We have all kinds of things that will be brought up on this moving forward here in twenty six, and you will be able to leverage this. You’ll be able to brand it.

All of those aspects that that you can bring to the table and leverage that information in there to open doors, to have conversations with your customers, and and be able to just really talk the talk and be backed up by these experts that we just had.

The the the real cloud wins, again, these are the win wires, and we are constantly adding to these. These are everything from any aspect that cloud touches. So it’s cloud and AI. It’s private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud. It’s all the wins that we are doing.

And it’s something that is that is really, I think, unique for us is because you can take these, you can utilize these, put these in front of your customer, and say, hey. This is where we’re winning. This sounds like you. I wanted to bring this to the table as an example that can help you understand what what I can do as your TA here or your partner to be able to talk you through what we can do to help you either make this migration, make a change, make an update, leverage the cloud technology that’s out there now. And here’s something that’s very similar to to what you do and how you operate.

And then the final thing is the blogs and ebooks.

Myself pontificating about what’s happening in the cloud world and being able to put it out there for you to utilize, hopefully learn from, and be able to publish so that you don’t have to worry about anything that is coming down that you’re gonna be surprised by. So, again, this is an an overarching Cloud Launchpad that gives you all different aspects to be able to utilize.

Let’s go to the last one here, the last slide. So the next cloud conversation hopefully starts here. Every tool course, all the expert connections lives in hub and subsequently under that Telarus University. So it’s built for you to walk into the next cloud conversation and be more prepared than than your competition is. Be able to have that conversation comfortably with your customers.

And really, the simple thing here is you visit, which, again, it’s been dropped in the chat numerous times, but it’s telarus university dot com slash cloud. You pick up a toolkit. You begin marketing to your customer base. So you leverage the toolkit that’s there from the marketing and sales standpoint. And then you pull in the solution architects or the solution engineers. Start with your regional SE because they’re gonna not only talk cloud, they’re also gonna talk the different aspects that cloud impacts for your customer. And, again, we really want to come alongside of you and help you become comfortable with cloud and become your local cloud expert to all of your customers.