Greetings from Also Cloud Expo 2014

March 27, 2014Leave a comment

This week we had an opportunity to attend Also Cloud Expo 2014 in Wanha Satama, Helsinki, Finland. Onrego had a booth and I had a speech about how customers are making a movement from producing their own IT infrastructure to service management and cloudsourcing. Let’s summarize the event with couple of pics.

The first ever Also Cloud Expo had an amazing spirit. It was about collaboration between doers and partners, driving the industry to the same direction and not seeing each other as a competitor. It was seeing each other as an opportunity to build the future and a competitive cloud service portfolio that creates value to customers.

Big news was published just couple of days before Also Cloud Expo: ALSO acquired Nervogrid. The acquisition made ALSO the leading Cloud Broker and the whole Expo was guided by the same message: now MSP’s and IT resellers can start to build a cloud service portfolio for their customers with no need to develop and do everything again if someone has already done it.

Mr. Perttu Monthan (@monthan) opened the event, followed by Mr. Jukka Kortesniemi from ALSO and Mr. Ari Rikkilä (@ari_rikkila) from Nervogrid (or ALSO Cloud, nowadays).

Mr. Samuli Savo (@samusavo) from Marketvisio kept an interesting keynote about insights of cloud services.

Couple of key takeaways from Samuli are:

It is wrong to compare just the price tag of on-premises installation and cloud service. To most organizations, agility matters and is the driver towards cloud.
Customers tend to buy cloud services from their trusted advisors.
MSP’s and IT resellers should focus on their added value on value chain: why would customers buy cloud services from you, if they can buy it from cloud service provider, such as Microsoft.
IaaS will grow a lot in the near future (and companies need cloud based server and service monitoring systems to monitor decentralized datacenters, such as Online System Center by Onrego)
Cloud Brokerage will also grow a lot in the future: the takeaway for MSP’s and IT resellers is: use and resell cloud services that already exists and create your own place in the value chain.

My speech was right after Samuli’s great keynote. I wanted to share our experience and customer stories about how customers are shifting from producing IT by themselves to service management.

I started by talking about outsourcing and how total outsourcing cases have been disappearing while customers are shifting to cloudsourcing model. One great opportunity for MSP’s and IT resellers is the fact in which customers that are now doing everything by themselves, are ready to move from insourcing straight to cloudsourcing. This creates a whole new market. The market is called Cloud Brokerage.

Jarno (@jarnomaki)

Greetings from ALSO Expo

October 21, 2013Leave a comment

Onrego attended ALSO Expo in Finland couple of weeks ago and made dozens of new contacts. Let’s summarize the expo with a few pics.

ALSO Finland, the biggest distributor in Finland, had it’s traditional ALSO Expo on October 10, 2013 in Tampere, Finland. Because the target audience for the expo was Finnish IT resellers and Managed Service Providers, Onrego attended the expo with it’s own booth. We made dozens of new contacts with meeting requests so I’d say the event was very successful for us.

There was also a couple of presentations and one of them was by Jukka Kortesniemi from ALSO. Jukka had a presentation concerning cloud services and what to expect from them in a near future.

Onrego had also a chance to attend Microsoft’s own pre-party at Klubi before ALSO’s own party after the expo. I’m very grateful to Mr. Jarkko Lainio from Microsoft Finland as he invited me to join him on the stage with Microsoft’s Mr. Markku Pulkkinen and Mr. Lasse Gerdt and to talk about Onrego and Onrego Online System Center and how Onrego benefits from being a Microsoft Gold Partner.

Finally, Also Expo ended with a much expected party with food and beverige. Evening’s special guest star was Jenni Vartiainen, the most popular female artist in Finland at the moment. What a great event!

Onrego to Join Aalto Start-Up Center to Accelerate Growth

August 20, 2013August 20, 2013Leave a comment

Onrego Ltd has been approved to Aalto Start-Up Center. Aalto Start-up Center works under Aalto University School of Business and is known for accelerating Rovio’s and Supercell’s growth. Only 20% of applicants are approved and Onrego is one of them! Aalto Start-Up Center is a business incubator located in Helsinki, Finland. It works under Aalto University School of Business and has been accelerating Finnish start-ups from 1997. Couple of well-known startups Aalto Start-Up Center has been helping are Rovio and Supercell. Aalto Start-Up Center is a well-respected and wanted business incubator. According to the company, only 20 % of applicants are approved to join Aalto Start-Up Center. We at Onrego are very pleased to be able to join and get help on accelerating the growth of Onrego.

Onrego’s vision is to provide cloud services for MSP’s and resellers on a global basis to help organizations to benefit from the cloud era. We will see lots of movement towards cloud services in a near future. One of the driving force is the Cloud First policy. For example, President Obama and the government of United States of America is one of the first ones driving eagerly Cloud First policy. Lately, we have seen countries such UK and Australia starting their own Cloud First policies and now the EU has started Cloud for Europe project, with a modest target of trying to reach EUR 250 bn economy boost to European economy. Onrego is working very hard together with Microsoft to be able to provide cloud services that able organizations to move to the cloud. Aalto Start-Up Center will be helping Onrego on its path to fulfill the vision.

For more information about Onrego and Onrego’s vision, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Jarno

Also to Start Distributing Onrego Cloud Services

August 16, 2013August 16, 2013Leave a comment

Also Finland and Onrego has signed a contract in which Also starts to distribute Onrego Cloud Services in Finland. Also is the biggest distributor in Finland with 60 % market share and almost 2 000 active resellers over the country. Onrego’s Cloud Services are now available as well as for resellers but also for Managed Service Providers (MSP’s).

Also and Onrego has released a Press Release (in Finnish) about the contract between the two companies. Also starts to distribute Onrego Cloud Services to its Finnish resellers and MSP’s. For Also, this means a new add-on to Also Cloud concept and to Onrego, ability to reach large number of potential resellers and MPS’s.

As for the start-up of Also’s and Onrego’s cooperation, I had a chance to shake hand with Also Finland’s Managing Director Mrs. Mervi Airaksinen!

What does this mean to resellers and Managed Service Providers?

Most of the information for the resellers and MSP’s can be found from Also Cloud website, but I want to write down couple of reasons why Also’s almost 2000 resellers and MSP’s will benefit from the cooperation.

We have been seeing movement towards cloud services lately. Many corporations has been telling us that they are planning on moving everything to the cloud. And they mean everything from Active Directory to management tools. Another ones are telling us that they are expecting that most of their datacenter virtual machine workloads will be moved to hosters and IaaS providers in a near future.

In the mean time, governments of USA, UK, Australia and EU are driving Cloud First policies to accelerate cloud adoption.

For resellers, to be able to get Onrego Cloud Services through Also Finland, means that they can deliver Microsoft System Center products faster and more agile than ever before. It also means that resellers can benefit from the business model of cloud service. That means continuous monthly revenue.

We have been talking to number of Managed Service Providers too and we have seen a trend. A trend in which MSP’s no longer want to implement new tools (such as management ones) and spend lots of euros in investments, that has a flat payback time.

Managed Service Providers can benefit from Onrego’s Online System Center in their service production and stop spending valuable time in developing and maintaining tools for workstation management, server and service monitoring and service management.

Please learn more about the offering for resellers and Managed Service Providers from the Also Cloud website.

Service Monitoring and ITSM Breakfast Seminar @ Microsoft

June 13, 2013June 13, 2013Leave a comment

Our company Onrego kept a breakfast seminar yesterday together with Microsoft and Service-Flow Corporation. The focus was on Onrego Online System Center Operations Manager, how companies can benefit from it as an instant ready to use service monitoring system and on Service-Flow Corporation’s ITSM integration between numerous ITSM systems and Onrego Online System Center Service Manager. Let me summarize the event to you.

In my previous blog post, I wrote datacenter workloads are moving from organization’s datacenters to hosters and to IaaS cloud service providers. Couple of other trends we have seen within a year are: (1) companies does not have intelligent service (and server) monitoring systems and (2) companies are interested in owning their ITSM data rather than letting their MSP to own it because problems might arise when MSP is changed. Trend #2 also includes a note: many companies are interested in Microsoft System Center Service Manager as of ITSM system.

With these trends in mind and because our company Onrego do have quick and cost effective solutions for these trends (the answer is www.onlinesystemcenter.com by the way), we wanted to get together bunch of great people (read: customers) and have a breakfast seminar to cover these trends.

The breakfast seminar took place at Microsoft Finland, and started with a great keynote from Microsoft’s Juha Karppinen, Server & Tools Business Group Lead.

Juha talked about Cloud OS and Windows Server & System Center.

Juha’s presentations was followed by Onrego’s Pekka Onnela.

Pekka told us about cloud based System Center Operation Manager made available by Onrego and had couple of crazy demos of Onrego Dashboard, a browser based GUI to Service Monitoring via Microsoft System Center Operations Manager and Global Service Monitoring, a feature that lets you monitor your websites from all over the world.

After a quick pause, our partner, Service-Flow Corporation had their turn and Juha Berghäll and Kai Virkki entered the stage.

They gave couple of very nice demos how their cloud based ITSM Integration Service, which allows customers to use Onrego’s Online System Center Service Manager as their primary ITSM system, and automatically translate communication (such as tickets) to their MSP’s ITSM system. Service-Flow has done amazing job, since their online integration service handles ITSM systems such as ServiceNow, Efecte, BMC, Zendesk, and of course Microsoft System Center Service Manager. Service-Flow actually has online integrations to the largest Finnish MSP’s (CGI, Fujitsu, Atos and Tieto).

This means that when organizations want to have an online cloud based ITSM system (and they really do), they don’t need to take ServiceNow anymore. They can continue to use familiar Microsoft products because of Onrego’s Online System Center. And no matter if their MSP uses ServiceNow or BMC etc., integrations have already been made thanks to Service-Flow!

Onrego’s VP Kimmo Vesajoki ended the seminar and wished great summer time to attendees.

Thank you all the speakers and attendees!

Agile Sales and Lean Startups

April 23, 2013April 23, 2013Leave a comment

Onrego‘s VP Kimmo Vesajoki had a presentation today about Agile Sales at AgileJKL. Check it out!

Agile mindset is one of the few guidelines or best practises one can adopt in a high-tech startup environment. The essence of Lean Startup is the agility of the entire business venture – not just for product development, but also for management, sales, and customer relations. It requires development of human relations and genuine collaboration between all stakeholders, which can only be build on trust. This was Kimmo’s statement at AgileJKL today in Jyväskylä. You can check Kimmo’s Prezi from below.

http://prezi.com/ausddpesemlt/agilejkl-2013-04-23/

Kimmo Rocks!

100% Satisfied Customers

March 26, 2013Leave a comment

In connection with the application process for Microsoft Gold Partnership, we conducted a customer satisfaction survey based on Microsoft CSAT questionnaire. The results are now out and we are proud to share them with you all.

Our customers feel that Onrego is a good partner for them (in fact better than the average of Microsoft Partner), 100% of our customers are satisfied with us and is 100% willing to recommend us and buy from us again. We thank our customers for their trust!

As always, there was room for improvement as well and we will focus in particular on improving the quality of our communication towards our customers. This feedback will help us to develop our activities and we aim to achieve 100% satisfaction also in this area when we conduct the survey again!

We want to use this moment to thank all of our customers and wish them a great, sunny beginning of spring in this vernal equinox!

Thank you for your trust!

Onrego Closes Major Deal With Finnish Municipalities

March 1, 20131 Comment

Great news! Onrego Ltd together with Centero Ltd has closed a major deal with Tiera Ltd, a Finnish service provider for Finnish municipalities, to deliver Onrego’s Online System Center to Finnish municipalities.

Tiera starts to deliver Onrego‘s Online System Center cloud service to Finnish Municipalities. Onrego Online System Center is an innovative systems Management as a Service solution based on Microsoft System Center technologies. The deal covers workstation and mobile device management as a service as well as software packaging provided by Centero.

The deal is an exclusive three-year contract with an extra three-year option worth of few million euros.

Please read more from the Press Releases:

In English:
http://onrego.com/news/7/53/Onrego-and-Centero-Closes-Major-Deal-With-Tiera-and-Finnish-Municipalities/

In Finnish:
http://onrego.fi/news/6/23/Tiera-Onrego-ja-Centero-solmivat-yhteistyoesopimuksen-kuntien-tyoeasemanhallintapalvelusta/

The original Press Release from Kuntien Tiera Oy can be found from here: http://www.tiera.fi/node/209

It Takes Two To Tango But Five To Rock!

September 5, 2012September 25, 2012Leave a comment

In the last post I wrote we have a new branch office in Jyväskylä. But branch office, even in Jyväskylä, is pretty useless without any employees. So now we do have an employee in Jyväskylä branch.

I’m so proud to present our next employee and partner today! He (yes, he is a male) will be located in our brand new branch office in Jyväskylä and he will focus 100 per cent in sales and marketing. (Drumroll). Our next partner and our Vice President of Sales and Marketing is Mr. Kimmo Vesajoki. (Applause). Kimmo has been working in the industry for ages and has enough experience of sales management to become the leader of sales and marketing for Onrego.

We are very thrilled about this opportunity and together we are going to reinvent IT! We have big plans and we hope we can reveal them to our clients in a near future.

In the meantime, I do welcome Kimmo to Onrego team with open arms. Next a nice portrait with a glimpse of Andy meets Metro.

Congratulations Jyväskylä – Onrego To Expand Its Area of Influence!

September 4, 2012September 25, 20121 Comment

Congratulations Jyväskylä! Congratulations Keski-Suomen lääni! Congratulations Harjun torni! Onrego is expanding to Jyväskylä with a brand new branch office. With a lake-view this time.

A month ago we opened our first office in Espoo, Keilaniemi, right next to Angry Birds, Microsoft and Nokia. Today we open our next branch office to Jyväskylä City. Jyväskylä is a virile student city located right in the middle of Finland. There are a little bit over 130 000 residents living within the city limits. Jyväskylä is famous of its rally “Rally of the Thousand Lakes“, which is nowadays called “Neste Oil Rally Finland“, and today, of course of its Onrego Branch Office!

While our headquarter is located by the sea in Keilaniemi, Espoo, our Jyväskylä branch is located by lake Jyväsjärvi with a walking distance to city center.

But one question remains. Are there any employees working in the branch? Hmm… let’s dig into that in the next post.

JarnoMaki.com

Cloud Services, Azure and Alpine Skiing

Tag: Onrego