RoseASP Dynamics Hosting

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As we all know, backups are such an import part of your daily maintenance routine.  One of the many reasons companies chose to implement their ERP solution in the cloud, is not having to worry about their daily backups.  That being said, I am always amazed at how little prospects ask about it or truly understand what is being backed up and for how long.   Even though there are thousands of people who use products like QuickBooks Online, NetSuite and Microsoft CRM online, none of these online providers will actually give you a “point in time” restore.  So you ask, what exactly is a “point in time” restore?

A “point in time” restore is a restoration of your data to a specific historical date in time – seems simple but most providers backup in mass and cannot distinguish your data specifically from everyone else’s, so if you happen to have a major catastrophe in your accounting department and need to restore from a few days ago, this might not be possible unless your provider allows for “point in time” restore.

While these scenarios seem unlikely to you, the three large providers I mentioned above cannot provide you with the backups you would need in either of these cases.  And neither do many other hosting providers!!  So what should a customer know and compare with hosting providers to make sure they are getting what they need in terms of backups?

• Have your provider specifically give you the terms of your backup retention periods.  Most only provide for 90 days.  Here is what we recommend:
  • Daily, weekly, monthly and annual – Point in time backups and restore capability
  • Seven years of data retention – this is recommended for both private and public companies
• Be sure to ask for the additional costs of those backups – so this doesn’t come as a shock later
• Be sure you understand how much storage backup you will receive as part of your fixed monthly costs – another hidden cost that providers don’t share on their quotes
• Make sure you understand exactly what is being backed up; data, custom code, Excel and Word documents you happen to store, scanned documents that are attached to your data, etc.
• Ask for their written policy for “test” restores.  And if you are required to be audited, ask that a test restore be performed and documented at least twice a year.

Never make the assumption that because you are in the cloud, that everything is backed up forever.  And always compare backup policies carefully amongst providers!

In Part II we will uncover the hidden costs of backups. So, stayed tuned.

RoseASP has been a Microsoft Dynamics hosting provider of ERP and CRM solutions since 2000.  We give every customer daily, weekly, monthly, and seven years of annual backups as part of their monthly hosting fees at no additional charge. To learn more, visit us at www.roseasp.com.

I guess that answer really depends on who you are, and what you do from 8am to 6pm everyday! (More about that later.) But before we dive into the question, let’s really define what “on-demand” means. On-demand, not to be confused with SaaS or Software as a Service, really means you can get it anytime. SaaS, while cloud based, doesn’t really mean on-demand, does it? It means, I found your solution on the web. I can use your solution on the web, but I really need to wait for a sales person to call me and give me pricing. Of course after I’ve been kept on the phone and “pre-qualified” and questioned as to when I will be making a decision and if I am the decision maker! Right?? I think some of these vendors, i.e. Netsuite, Intacct and now EpicorExpress to name a few are most definitely SaaS solutions. But they are not on demand!! A good example of on demand that most of us can relate to is renting movies. Today, that means picking up your remote and ordering the movie right then and there and watching it within seconds. Not waiting for it to come in the mail in the little red envelope in a couple of days, and not waiting for it to download onto your television. So that’s what “on-demand” really means. So is there really a need for it?
Now back to my initial question: I guess the answer depends on who you are and what you do between 8am and 6pm. If you happened to be the CEO or CFO of your company (or the only “C” of your company) you have lots to do between 8am and 6pm. And you probably work longer than that!!! So between those hours you are probably trying to work with customers in getting their issues and products shipped, working with vendors to try to get your supplies delivered on time, or working with your employees who always seems to find ways to interrupt your perfectly planned days with HR issues or communications issues – you know the kind I am talking about. So when exactly do you have time to review your current accounting system – the one that doesn’t give you the reports you need, the one you cannot access from home or while traveling, or the one that just doesn’t work anymore because half your data is now on Excel spreadsheets and you don’t know who has the latest version or you forgot which drive you saved it on. So now that you have tackled all the issues of the day, it is probably after 6pm and you finally have some time to concentrate on the fact that you need a new accounting system!!!
So you start your research on the web, looking for the right fit, and then drop out some emails, possibly so someone can call you tomorrow with more information (when you won’t have time to take a call). Or, you can find a site like myGPcloud.com that has all the information you need; it lets you view some helpful videos about the product, (without giving your complete company history on a contact form), register to use the product (without giving a credit card number) and know that it is backed by one of the largest companies in the world (so you know they will have the R&D budget to keep it current)have the ability to chat ( in case you get stuck along the way), read the blog experiences ( in case you don’t believe the vendor) or view the “how to” hints that arrive daily in your inbox that you will be able to save and read when you have time. Plus, someone with an accounting background also setup a useful and meaningful chart of accounts, pre-set some of the common setup’s that all companies need, and actually put financial statements that you could give to your bank, partners or investors without you having to spend time or effort to create them. And all that with: no sales call, no sales pitch you have to listen to, no demonstration that you have to wait for, no upfront fee (possibly a year’s worth by the other guys I mentioned) and no contract commitments – other than just paying your monthly fee!!!!. Oh, and an uptime guarantee of 99.5%! Hmm I think someone out there needs help with that these days.
And when you are ready for a Certified Microsoft Dynamics Partner to help you, myGPcloud will give some sites to help you find one in your area – self service of course!
Now, in my opinion that is “on-demand” and that my fellow business owners, accountants and “C” level execs , is what sets myGPcloud apart from the typical SaaS solutions on the market today So when asked is there really a need for an “on-demand” ERP solution? Just look at your watch and tell me what time of day it is while you read this blog. If it is after 5pm, well you know the answer. Our economy has changed. We must do more with less people. We must grow our businesses without the assistance of financing either from banks or the public market. The days of extensive capital expenditures are gone. Great products with little or no risk will (must) become the norm, because that is what customer want and need. Try myGPcloud.com and tell us what you think. We welcome your opinion.
Linda Rose
President/CEO
RoseASP.com

myGPcloud is powered by RoseASP.com a Microsoft Hosting Partner with over 10 years experience in hosting ERP solutions. For more information please visit www.mygpcloud.com or RoseASP.com

As you may have seen in the press, Quickbooks On-Line and many of the Quickbook products have been down since Tuesday, June 15 at 7:00 p.m. PST. We do wish them well in a speedy recovery, but wanted to take a moment and chat with our customers about the RoseASP infrastructure and recovery planning.
It would seem that Quickbooks must have had a single point of failure problem, as the service is completely down, and cannot bring one customer up, unless they all come up.

RoseASP infrastructure is made of several, recoverable, customer specific pieces. As a dedicated or shared user on our system, you are on your own instance of SQL server, own instance of Microsoft Dynamics, your own specific company connection, and your own instance of any third-party systems. Each one of these systems that you use to run your company has a redundant piece of equipment on-site and a redundant piece of equipment offsite for use in a disaster. Not only are the databases backed up nightly, weekly and monthly, so is your specific configurations of users and Dynamics.

By keeping your systems independent but part of a larger computing environment you have the advantage of very specific software installation with the ability to leverage a much larger redundant
infrastructure and support system.

Let’s give a couple examples. In the event someone has a corrupt database, this would affect only one company, not all companies. In this event, we would take down that one company’s database and system to try to repair the database. If we could not repair that specific database, we would go to a back-up of that database and restore that specific database. Again this would and could only affect one company at a time.

Another example would be hardware failure. If we lose a specific piece of hardware, they are in redundant pairs. The redundant pair would take over for the existing system and at worst case your users would lose the last couple of transactions they are working on. Specifically, in the case of Quickbooks on-line, apparently the outage was due to some redundant power features not working correctly. RoseASP has taken the added step of having its own redundant power outside of the redundant power for our Data Centers. Therefore, should there be a sudden loss in power with our Data Center, Rose servers will remain up and running for a period of time, which we believe will be sufficient enough for our Data Centers to recover.

Should the unfortunate event occur that an entire data center is lost due to a natural disaster we would restore our backups to a secondary data center where we have database servers, and terminal service servers up and running. This case would take several hours, but not days. And in this situation we would be coordinating with our customers to prioritize what systems need to come up first, second, etc. This allows us to be very specific about bringing up mission critical systems.

If you have specific questions about the many safeguards RoseASP has in place to protect your business, we’re happy to answer them.

Most of my better blog posts come from discussions with prospects and customers considering a SAAS or Hosted solution using Microsoft Dynamics. The most recent conversation I had with a prospect was around “whose data is it”? Mine, or yours? Well of course that gave me a great introduction to talk about how we (the Microsoft channel) really differentiate ourselves from other SAAS solutions vendors. I am not going to claim to be an expert on NetSuite, but after talking to a few of their customers it appears that the data is not really theirs. So, if they ever planned on moving to another system those years of historical data, unless they can be dumped into excel from some custom reports, cannot be moved. This clearly creates a dilemma, especially if you need (due to SOX compliancy requirements) or want to maintain historical information, for year over year reporting. Unless you continue with the service, where will you put this historical information and how will you be able to access it?
On the other hand, when a prospect chooses a Dynamics solutions either hosted by Microsoft (CRM) or one of the ERP solutions, hosted by partners, this data can always be brought “on-premise” in totality. Which would you pick as a customer???

I recently had a prospect send me a competing quote from another Dynamics hosting company. He sent it to me because he was so confused and needed my assistance to help him compare “apples to apples”.

If you don’t live and breathe “hosting” or “SPLA pricing” everyday, it is a difficult and daunting task to compare various hosting quotes. I thought I would share some tips and “traps” that will help you and your prospects through this process.

First, don’t get sucked in by the provider with the lowest price! After you look carefully line item by line item you will quickly realize that you are going to be charged for every little component which will quickly add up. Here are some examples:

1. Are you being charged extra for Microsoft Office (Word and Excel) which are really necessary to run Dynamics properly these days. The quote that I saw was charging an extra $30 per user/ per month.

2. Are you being charged extra for storage? Each hosting provider should be offering you some amount of storage as part of their monthly fee. Find out how much!!! And find out how much you will be charged for storage after you reach the allotted amount.

3. Make sure you have the ability to email or PDF out of the Dynamics system. Many providers charge an extra amount for Adobe or another PDF writer.

4. Find out how you will be accessing your Dynamics data. Is your provider using Terminal Services, Citrix or VPN. Also make sure you can access your data from anywhere!!! I am amazed at how sometimes providers only allow you to access the data from your office – I mean really, what’s the point of using a hosting provider that doesn’t allow you to access your data from anywhere!!!

5. Drill down on what the setup fees cover. This too can vary from provider to provider. Does it include the ENTIRE application including the latest Service Packs? Who is responsible for installing the ISV solutions? The consulting group or the hosting group. Do you get a test company, or the just Fabrikam? Does it include all the SSRS and Excel based reports??

6. If custom development work is being provided as part of your solution, where is that development environment being deployed? Will you have to pay extra for a server?

7. Will you be charged extra for web services??? I have found that most hosting providers don’t even know how to address this.

8. How will the upgrade work and who is responsible for doing it? Some providers build that into their monthly fee, others don’t cover it at all. Your customer needs to clearly understand the difference.

9. Where is your application actually being deployed? On a virtual image or on a shared box? How is the CPU and RAM being managed? Find out the specifications of the box that your database is being deployed on. Also find out where the client is being deployed and the CPU allotted to each. There is a big difference between a virtual image, a shared SQL box and a dedicated box. Make sure you understand what you are getting.

10. Finally, what happens after your contract term is over, or if you want to bring the solution “on-premise”. What is the maximum amount of price increase that is allowed after the term of the contract? (Are you getting a great price in the first year, but it goes way up come year two?) And if you decide to bring the solution “on-premise”, find out what the format is that your data will be given to you, and how transferable it is to a new system. But most importantly find out the price for that NOW!!

So to summarize; what was originally a $195 per user/ per month quote, turned out to be more like $399 a user per month after you add in all the required elements!!!.

If you need help deciphering your hosting quotes, feel free to drop me a line anytime at linda@roseasp.com .

The key to hosting Dynamics GP or any other Dynamics (or you can say what separates the men from the boys) is the ability to host ISV solutions as well. For many years developers have been creating solutions to round out the Dynamics product lines.

For a Hosting company to really be success and to service their customers well they need to be able to hosting ISV solutions successfully. After 9 years of hosting I am very happy to announce our list of ISV solutions hosted by RoseASP:

• Avalara for Sales Tax
• Azox for eCommerce
• Ethotech for commissions
• Greenshades for payroll
• Integrity Data, Mc2
• Mekorma for MICR
• Nodus for CC
• Nolan for Intercompany
• eOne for integrations
• PaperSave for Document Management
• Olympic for Project Costing
• Rockton
• Sales Pad for Order Entry
• Scribe for Integrations
• Solver
• Tensoft and Vsync for EDI

Please visit www.roseasp.com/partners to learn more about these great solutions that are now available for hosting.