Lesson 4: Experience support during a proof of concept

Proof of concepts (POC) are, in my opinion, an absolutely crucial part of buying infrastructure. If you are not doing a POC with at least the final two providers in your decision making process, you’re doing something wrong. 

I understand that one of the biggest arguments against doing POCs is the cost and resources required as they do take time. But I truly believe that they are worth the investment. It’s impossible to get a real handle on what you’re buying if you don’t experience it in practice and good infrastructure partners should be urging you to carry out a POC with them. 

So, when you are starting the buying process and allocating a budget, make sure to incorporate the costs of several POCs within that budget. Because while I’ve said to include at least the final two providers on your shortlist, carrying out POCs with multiple vendors at the same time is the only way you can really get a true comparison. As I discussed in a previous piece, comparing components alone doesn’t work.

Of course, there are various ways to approach POCs and for this lesson in the series, I want to make the argument for why you should go beyond just the technical. 

Experience what it’s like to do business with a provider

The key thing to ensuring a successful POC is having a really clear understanding about what you want to get out of the process. What are your specific metrics for success for a POC? 

If we look at POC approaches in a kind of tiering system, I would say that there are three distinct tiers. 

The first and the one we see most often when working with prospective customers revolves around four metrics: network performance, the performance of that company’s application on an exact CPU, RAM and disk set up. These factors are important but they form a very basic POC that won’t tell you a whole lot about the hosting provider. 

The second tier includes a little more detail around these three metrics. For example, having a specific performance target in mind for the network rather than just testing the networking performance in general.

Are you testing the network for latency? Well latency can change over time and the true test of a good network is how it deals with failures and re-routing of paths to avoid sudden spikes in latency, meaning you need to be running tests and measuring results over time not just a quick ping test. This type of POC is more in depth but continues to focus just on the technical performance. 

The third tier goes beyond testing the technical elements to look at what it’s like to do business with that provider. To look at what the invoice process is like, for example. Does my accounting team like the format of the invoice? Is the invoice correct? How often will I receive an invoice?

You should also look at what the communications are like with and from the provider. For example, have I been assigned an account manager? How long does it take for your account manager to respond to a query? Will the team guiding me through the initial purchase be the team that will be managing my account moving forward?

And importantly, because this is perhaps the metric least considered when organizing POCs; test the support. Break something on purpose, put in a ticket or message the support line and see if their response aligns with what the sales person has sold you on and the SLAs that are in the contract. What’s the customer portal experience like? If I want to buy something else, how easy is that to do? If I want to cancel something, what is the process? Can I get access to senior decision makers at the company?

The ‘business’ side of the customer-provider relationship is the most variable but also what you will be interacting with on a daily basis. These recommendations above don’t require a huge amount of effort to do but the value they provide is enormous. They show you what it’s truly like to do business with that provider and I guarantee that by the end of the POC process you will have a much more accurate view of who you want to partner with.  

What do you think of my recommendations? Which tier do you tend to follow when carrying out POCs? Let me know in the comments below or get in touch directly.