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Small Business Frequent Questions

There are a lot of questions that come with a transition to cloud computing, especially for small business owners. Here are a few of the questions we regularly field when working with a client.

Health Checks

Health Checks allow our team to monitor and collect data on your computing environment. This data is then analyzed to determine the current health of your systems, including security and functionality. From there, our team will provide a report with the findings and make recommendations for changes. We will work with you to develop a remediation plan that will get your environment running in top shape.

What do your Small Business Solutions cost? We provide free quotes. But basically, we charge our customers on a per user, per month basis so that your total costs are easy to predict and budget for. Simply fill out the “Contact Us” form at the bottom of this page and we will get back to you quickly. How do I get started? You simply fill in the form at the bottom of this page and we’ll get in touch quickly to set up a preliminary discussion over the phone.
What cities does stratiform serve? We are headquartered in Calgary but because of the fact that (1) we have a second office located in Vancouver and have local people in these other cities, (2) we leverage remote assistance tools in order to increase responsiveness and keep your costs down and (3) we ultimately move your key systems to the cloud, we can provide high-quality support to clients across Canada.
Why are your solutions less expensive? We are able to offer great pricing for several reasons. First, by moving your applications to the cloud, you now no longer have to worry about the hardware outages that often disrupt operations. This means that we don’t need to plan for troubleshooting these either. Second, we are able to facilitate access to your cloud-based applications using a special service called Azure RemoteApp. This makes the devices that your personnel use much less relevant. Whether they use a desktop, a laptop or a tablet (such as an iPad or an Android device), their applications typically run trouble-free. And finally, because we have moved your data and applications to the cloud, most support that we provide you can be performed remotely. Less site visits mean less cost to you. That being said, we take on clients ‘as-is’ and work with them to determine the best and most cost effective way for them to run their business from an IT perspective.
How long does it take to move to the cloud? This depends. Every customer is unique. Our primary concern is in doing what is right for you. For many customers, we are able to move them completely to the cloud within just a few weeks. For others, we do a staged migration where we move certain workloads to the cloud one at a time so as to be less disruptive to your business.
How does it work at the beginning? Once we have provided you with your Stratiform for Small Business contract and you have agreed to it, we take over support for you right away. We will have provided you with a set of timelines for moving applications and data to the cloud and we will follow this closely so that you are moved over time. But our 24×7 support services will be there supporting you right from the beginning.
How do we contact you for support? For many of our customers, we provide them with their own web-based portal that allows them to submit and track issue tickets. However, email support and telephone support are always provided as well so that notifying us of an issue is never difficult.
What benefits are there to using Stratiform? As part of our contract with you, we also provide you with periodic strategy sessions where one of Stratiform’s architects meets with you to discuss new technologies and other changes that make sense for your business. We also provide you with on-site training so that any new technologies that your people are not familiar with can be learned. And finally, we provide you with a free copy of Stratus-ID, our solution that easily allows you to on-board, off-board and make changes to accounts from an easy-to-use web interface.
What is Office 365? Office 365 refers to Microsoft bundled cloud services that include access to Office applications plus other productivity services that are enabled over the Internet (cloud services), such as Skype for Business (instant messaging and web conferencing), Exchange Online hosted email, SharePoint online (for company web portals and file access) and additional online storage with OneDrive.

The good thing about the Office 365 subscription is that it’s one payment that covers whichever device on whichever platform you want to use it on. And Office now has a presence on every major platform. There are desktop apps for Windows and Mac, there are mobile apps for iOS and Android as well as Windows Phone.

Stratiform is a Microsoft CSP (Cloud Solutions Provider) and thus can help you subscribe to Office 365 while also complementing it with our own management, monitoring and support.
What is Azure? Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure created by Microsoft for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. What this actually means is that you can run your servers in Microsoft data centers instead of in your office locally. These are fully functional servers that have all of the same capabilities that a normal on-premise server has. But because you let Microsoft worry about the hardware aspect of things, you avoid the cost of procuring hardware, upgrading hardware, replacing hardware and troubleshooting it when components fail. Also, Microsoft offers several other Azure services beyond just hosting servers. One of these is Azure backup. This replaces traditional backup and tape drives so that backups just happen without manual involvement on your part (such as ferrying tapes back and forth from an alternate location). Another Azure feature is called Azure RemoteApp. This feature allows you to run applications from within the Azure data enter without regard for the device you are using. In some cases, we have customers that are running Windows applications like Microsoft Project or Adobe Illustrator from an iPad.

Because Stratiform is a Microsoft CSP (Cloud Solutions Provider), we can also help you subscribe to Azure while also complementing it with our own management, monitoring and support.

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