Moving to the Cloud – How a Conversion Works with IVDesk – continued

Continued from previous Post

The Pilot runs for as long as needed.  With small clients it can be a day, with larger ones a week or more.  The goal is to get the applications tested and fix/adjust anything identified.  It’s a trial “Live” day and we treat it as such.  Support’s available for the users, the Pilot group has gone through IVDesk training, and everyone’s ready to go.  We check off applications as they’ve been tested and work through the details.

Once the Pilot is complete, we affirm the live cut-over date and schedule the cut-over items: Training for users, final setup of a secondary Internet connection, Email cut-over requirements, data migration/cut-over scheduling, etc.  Most of this occurs during the last week or so of the turn-up and is scheduled fairly tightly.  We do special things for Internet connection failover, large data migration, application data/database migration, and other items as needed.  Our focus is on a smooth cut-over timed best for the client.

Last couple of items to give you an idea about are the cut-over day and the first Live day.  We’ve gotten everyone though the straight-forward training and prep week, and have scheduled MX record cut-over time and are capturing live data copies.  Friday (usually) afternoon comes and we show up on site to touch each PC, do some basic clean up, finalize capture of user settings locally, data, favorites, etc., and get what we need.  For some server applications this can be very detailed.  We’re on site until we’ve got everything and then route the data and details to the data center.  This can be remote or via physical data moves as needed.

Over the weekend we import all the data, email, databases, etc. and have key Pilot users testing on Saturday.  Everything is there by now, all users a live, email’s flowing, and we’re just finalizing every desktop for each user.  We login as each user and go through an exhaustive setup of sets to insure that the first Live day will be good and solid for all users.  No one wants surprises.

Monday comes and we’re there with donuts/bagels when employees arrive.  We want to make sure that first experience is solid and answer questions as they arive.  We’ve tested everything by now but they’ll be a few small things that we address on site.  Depending on the size of the customer and complexity we may be there a few hours to a few days.  What ever is needed.  We want it smooth and will do what we need to to make sure it is.  Users can call the Helpdesk at any time or grab local staff while we’re there.

After the initial Live on-site time, users contact the Helpdesk by phone or email and get immediate help.  We can quickly shadow their sessions and work with any issues as they arrive.  We can help set users up at home or on the road (very easy) and are available when ever they need it.  At their finger tips…

That’s it.  Kinda detailed here but very smooth to our customers.  You can see a few talk about it on YouTube by searching for IVDesk and hearing it from their own experiences.  Not a lot to worry about, we Pilot everything, and our goal is to make it smooth.  Once a customer is up, things are very straight-forward for them.

Let us talk with you about getting out of the IT business and saving you time, capital, money, and your sanity!  Give us a call to talk about how we can help.

Thanks
Bill Sorenson
www.IVDesk.com
612-605-5461