Unpacking the Benefits of Azure Arc

You're listening to B to B Tech Talk with Ingram Micro, a place to learn about how to grow your business and stay ahead of technological advances before they've become mainstream. This episode is sponsored by Ingram Micro's Expantage, the Next Level way to transform your business's potential and reshape how customers see you through advanced transactional data. Let's get into it. Welcome to B to B Tech Talk with Ingram Micro.

I'm your host, Shelby Skirhawk, and our guests today are Paul Becker, Senior Sales Engineer, Sean Wilson, Senior Sales Engineer, and Stephanie Brown customer experienced representative all of Ingram Micro. Paul, Sean and Stephanie. Welcome, thank you, thank you, thanks well. So today we are talking about how to grow a partners as your business with ARC and s law.

But uh and we'll explain what those are. But first, Paul, let me ask you then, So for a listener tuning in, let's understand are these acronyms are these are these strange words? What are we talking about when we say ARC and splay. Microsoft likes to make everything an acronym these days, so this.

Is no exception. SPLAW. SPLA stands for Service Provider License Agreement. It's essentially a contract that allows service providers and independent software vendors again isb acronym to license Microsoft products on a monthly basis and earn margins on those.

And then ARC actually doesn't have an official acronym, but I've heard it called Azure Resource Controller, which is a good descriptor for it. You know, ARC is a Microsoft tool that bridges the your platform into your data center or other cloud environments, creating a hybrid connected solution. Okay, so that is helpful ARC understanding that it's kind of this, you know, it bridges these environments within Azure Total Suite essentially, right. Yeah, ARC is it allows you to manage and govern across all your connected resources.

So if you had an on prem environment and then you had a cloud environment, say Azure itself, and they're not connected through a management plane, you can employ ARC and in most cases it's free to do this deployment into your on prem environment. Or if you had say Azure. And then you actually had something in AWS, you could deploy ARC across both those platforms as well and then have a unified visibility for management of government governance across both those platforms. Okay, and again qualifying that we're talking about with an Azure you said bridging both on prem and then also obviously cloud right, correct.

Yeah, that's the main functionality of ARC is it allows you, it extends your management and ourness across any resource. You can connect to. Got it, got it? Okay, So it's definitely let me turn to you.

So making sure that we understand the relationship of SPLAW and ARC. What problems does ourc in particular help solve for the partner? Yeah, So the first side is from an operational standpoint, So with SPLAW there is self reporting, so there is a big operational burden on the partner leveraging Azure ARC that changes over into automated usage and billing reporting. We have it on our own platform that gets pulled every month, so that eliminates all of that workload on the partner.

It doesn't require a migration or customer motion. The reseller would just install the agent on the server, and there are programs that Microsoft is offering to flip that on their behalf, so the workload for that would. Not be there. From a fire financial standpoint, what Microsoft has been telling us is the cost is the same and there are just more financial incentives for the partners to make more money.

And it instead of managing their customers on multiple platforms using Azure Arc, it comes on a single plane to manage all their customers. So explain the self reporting part again that with SPLAW there is that self reporting, so I guess auditing or validating those licenses, that's something that it seems like a real benefit of ARC. Right, yes, so you know, to my understanding with SPLAW involves stuff reporting. It's kind of like an honor system, but Microsoft can audit you, so there is potential of getting fined.

So when you move to Azure ARC, that risk totally gets eliminated because when Microsoft does offer you know, you have when Microsoft is finding you, they you know, you either have to pay that or they do come to an agreement on and usually they're trying to get you to increase your CSP motion, which you would be able to do that with Azure Arc. Okay, so this is a basically way to help trackle those and just make a complicated issue obviously just a lot smoother, a lot more efficient.

So yes, yeah, well okay, so then Sean, let me turn to you. Let's talk about the benefits then of SPLAW and ARC. I know that Stephanie mentioned, you know, saving money, but I wonder if you can kind of go into a little bit more about that. The way I like to think of it as a SPLAW SPLA is the acronym.

It's a rental program. Right, It's a leasing program on a monthly basis that service provider not and service providers and ISVs can utilize. Instead of annual license typical annual licensing for say at Windows server or a SQL server, SPA is a vehicle where they could rent that license on a monthly basis. Now there's a been at a SHIFT right when you move to ARC.

It is a pay as you go model, right, So it's hourly billing, and it has certain advantages like SQL stop you can stop workloads. So you're not built and on a you know, a daily or monthly or annual basis. You're built on an hourly basis. So it's a great cost saving savings mechanism.

Also, there's a thing called es US or Extended Security Updates for older Windows servers. You know, to get es US, you need software assurance, right, so what if you didn't buy it. There's no mechanism to go out and obtain software assurance to cover these older workloads. So what you can do is move to the pay as you go model.

It's the same as having software assurance, and then you can get support and updates on these older workloads that are out there. And sorry, what do you mean by software assurance? It's how people discover support on their existing infrastructure. When you think of software assurance, were licensing, it's essentially security patches, error fixing, things of that nature that typically get loaded in at night when they're your machines offline.

These older versions like SQEL twenty twelve, twenty fourteen or Windows Server the same timeframes, they hit end of life and they stop getting these updates. But when you use ARC, Microsoft gives you an extension on those end of life dates, So that gives you an opportunity if you just have it taken care of those old legacy twenty twelve twenty fourteen deployments, it gives you a few more years to take care of it. Essentially by ARC. In that environment, it's very important for compliance to maintain security.

Patching and compliance. You know, within legal requirements within those regulated industries or just in general. Do you mean it's from a governance perspective, So like if you're a healthcare organization, you're governed by like things like HIPPO, So that covers the healthcare requirements for you know, say protecting social Security numbers. Right, that's a one component of HIPPO, and you know ensures that compliance.

And there's audits that organizations do on an annually annual quarterly basis to maintain compliance to say HIPPA for example, and they would fall out if their workloads are not secured. Sure, okay, so that makes sense and that's that seems like a real, a real benefit then of moving to ARC because you have those extensions of the of the assurances. I think the final thing is that the ease of the ability to push out things like vendor for cloud defender for server, so you can apply these patches.

Because you're centrally managing all your workloads, it's very easy to stay complying and push updated agents, updated you know, virus patterns, things of that nature that can be easily deployed. Yeah, that's a good point, Sean. I. One thing we haven't touched on is the fact that ARC itself is that, as we mentioned, the bridge between Azure and any other environment you connect it to, but it also extends the Azure management and governance and security into those other environments.

So you may not have at one point deployed security tools in your on prim environment, but you have done it in your Azure environment. If you put ARC into that bridge solution, you can extend your security platform to every other environment outside of Azure as well, which is exceptional because now you have one source to look at. That's huge, and that kind of seems like when that be really the when everybody's concerned, the thing I'll keep them up at night is security. That kind of seems like the you know, the ding ding ding the headline.

Now, Oh absolutely, yeah, it's a big issue these days. It always has been, but you know, with the with AI these days and the amount of data that is just hosting everywhere, security is always a challenge and there's always risk, so it's more security is always better. Right, right, So being able to extend that to on prem environments, that's definitely a win there exactly. Stuff.

Let me ask you, what are some of the most common questions that that partners will have about either SPLAW or ARC. I mean again, if they're starting with SPLAW and they really haven't made that full leap into using what are some of those questions or you know concerns that come up from partners. Yeah, so they may have like some questions around like what incentives are available to move that over into Azure ARC. There may be questions on what are the requirements.

Are they the same cores that they are INSPLA that work in Azure ARC, How does it work in moving their customers over? What are the costs are they higher, lower or the same for their end customers? Typically, those are the questions that we've been hearing. I just wanted to add one thing on the you know, the question of how do I get there?

Microsoft has created a website as your ARC jumpstart dot com. They can go to and it has scripts and videos on how to deploy these agents on different operating systems, and it's a community type format so you can provide feedback as well. But they, you know, they've really done a great job will making it easiest possible to migrate over? Also, Paul, what then is the process to get started.

Well for partners of Ingram and you know, the best way to get started is to contact your Ingram representative for Cloud. Once you've done that, we will connect you. With the correct resources to support your questions, get you started with OAR and Law, and ensure that you get any discounts or additional funding that we have available at the time. And I just want to add, if you know, for partners who haven't really dipped into Azure, there is a lot of funding available on that Microsoft or Ingram has it available to partners, So definitely work with your Ingram Azure sales rep to leverage.

Those excellent well. So as we do start to wrap up our episode, I always love to I'd love to summarize and kind of give our listeners just you know, one or two takeaways from this episode. So we ask this of all of you guys, what do you want partners listening to this episode to understand most What do you think is the one of those most key takeaways that if they grabbed anything from this episode they would know what And let me start with you, Paul. I'd say a couple of things here.

So using Azure with arc as I've brought up, extends the Azure ecosystem into whatever your connected environment is on prem or ADOBS, GCP, Cisco Cloud wherever. That gives you, as a partner, the opportunity to consider using the Azure platform as an addition data center. It could be a hybrid solution, it could be a backup highbility, disaster recovery solution, what have you. And it gives you the opportunities to start getting consumption in your Azure ecosystem.

And with SPLAW connected to ARC, you have visibility of your on prem deployed systems or your alternative deployed systems and that bridge connection so that you can summarize monthly your SPLAW deployments versus your infrastructure that's being deployed. And additionally, with ARC, if you didn't use your SPLAW licensing because it is a monthly, per thirty day rolling bill, you could just do page you go deployments and Azure and turn those off when you're not using them hourly.

So instead of running something twenty four to seven like you would on prem or paying for twenty four seven when you're not using it twenty four to seven, deploy that same solution and Azure and just have it on during the hours that you're using it, so you're not paying for what. You don't use. Sean, is there anything you would add to that? I think from a high level, just understanding that there's financial incentives up to thirty percent the first year, fifteen, the second five to third on the SQL workloads enables partners to go out and improve the security posture of their clients, their customers as well as operational efficiencies.

So Microsoft has done a great job with this program. I think, you know, things have changed. You know, it used to be classic data centers and sort of a model where everything was centrally located. Now everything's dispersed, right, So Microsoft has done a great job and allowing a migration to this type of environment.

And Stephanie a key takeaway or why Ingram Micro? Why is why singerm Micro the partner or the solution? So is this key takeaways or why should they choose Ingram Micro? A little bit both?

Really? Okay? Okay, So the first part like some key takeaways, like you know, Sean and Paul mentioned like bringing in some Azure resources like to Defender for cloud. So a lot of like MSPs or CSPs do like to offer bundles to their customers and this could be one of the tools where they can upsell and add those things or add to their current customer base.

And then why Ingram Micro. So we have a really large team who's very well versed in Azure, we have professional services that specialize in it. And then kind of what Sean had mentioned before, those funding programs and leveraging our expertise to to help build out your Azure practice excellent. So we mentioned if if you wanted to get started, reach out to your Ingram Micro representative, either to look into more to this or really just to get into your as your journey.

So yeah, I think I think we've given our listeners a great overview. Then if there's a is there anything else that I'm mis that you guys want to add? No, I think we pretty well covered the subject. But I tell you we're Sean and I and our other Azure engineers are here to support.

We work with Stephanie and our pre sales Azure and sales staff, and we are really just here to consult to make sure that you deploy Azure correctly. That if you need somebody to do an architectural design solution or just to give you a second review for what you're trying to accomplish. We're here to help. Yeah, and just to add it, like for those who are not sure who their Azure sales rep is, we do have a team alias that will help, that will get you to who's aligned with you, and that is Microsoft Dash as you're at ingrammicro dot com.

Perfect, all right, Well, I appreciate your time and your insight. Stephanie, Paul and Sean, thank you so much for joining me. You're welcome. God, have a great day.

Thank you, Thank you, and thank you listeners for tuning in and subscribing to B to B Tech Talk with Ingram Micro. If you haven't subscribed, be sure to do so, and don't forget that you can find all of these episodes on the ingram Micro Expantage platform. Until next time, I'm Shelby Skirhawk. You've been listening to B to B Tech Talk by Ingram Micro.

This episode was sponsored by Ingram Micro Exvantage. B to B Tech Talk is a joint production between Sweetfish Media and Ingram Micro. To listen to this episode and many others, visit ingrammicro dot com.