How Thomas Duryea lures customers to its cloud

Thomas Duryea Consulting's CTO has revealed how the integrator convinces cloud-reluctant customers to get over the line.

Rhys Evans, chief technology officer for Thomas Duryea, used his presentation at the EMC Forum last week to label public cloud offerings as "no care" and "no responsibility", as a contrast to his firm's approach to providing cloud.

"We are 'all care' and 'all responsibility'," Evans said.

Speaking at the Sydney stop of EMC's roadshow, Evans outlined how TD's managed services are offered in four stages: infrastructure-as-a-service, data protection for IaaS, disaster recovery as-a-service and backup-as-a-service.

[Photos: Who was at EMC Forum?]

He said speed of implementation was a major selling point for TD, especially for cloud-wary clients.

"For a backup-as-a-service project involving 30 virtual machines, we can assess in two days, design and build in three days, and seed/sync/test in three days."

Evans cited a project with Cancer Council of Victoria as a good example of this agility.

"The Cancer Council's lease was ending in its old building – so our timeframe was strictly six weeks," said Evans. "They were initially set on onsite infrastructure but we showed them the benefits of cloud."

Some of the technical shortcomings at the NGO included not having SLAs or metrics, a poor understanding of maintenance, a desire to concentrate on its core task of supporting cancer victims and a distant relationship between IT and the business.

"Thomas Duryea migrated the Cancer Council on a single weekend – that is, within 36 hours," said Evans. "The project gave them TD's IaaS, data protection, WAN and professional services."

Evans mentioned trans-Tasman business BJ Ball as another cloud-cautious client. The paper merchant – which sells "enough paper to reach the moon and back 21 times every year" – was scarred from a previous experience in which it was sold hosted blades as "cloud".

"[The blades] were unpatched and unmaintained, despite the customer having a service provider!" said Evans. "They had a two-person IT team supporting 600 users, and they were software developers who didn't want to be involved in infrastructure."

In the end, BJ Ball was provided IaaS, data protection, WAN, professional services and DR as-a-service by the consulting firm, with the old managed services provider cut loose.

Evans revealed that Thomas Duryea's third data centre presence will be added to its two existing locations in Victoria, while praising the new provider.

"We have a new data centre presence about to open in Sydney, hosted in NextDC's facilities," said Rhys Evans.

"NextDC's security is outstanding," Evans said. "They absolutely make sure only authorised people are allowed to enter. Even if you're a customer, if you want to visit you have to make a booking. If it's an emergency you'd only be allowed in if two other authorised people from your company can vouch for the situation."

Thomas Duryea Consulting was founded in 2000 and made the CRN Fast50 list in 2009 and 2010.