Adobe Connect Managed Services: FAQ
Adobe® Connect™ Managed Services
Frequently asked questions
Introduction
What is Adobe Connect Managed Services?
Adobe Connect Managed Services (ACMS) is an alternative deployment option where Adobe Connect is hosted on a single-tenant basis by Adobe and deployed “in the cloud” instead of being installed and deployed at the customer site or hosted on a multi-tenant basis by Adobe. ACMS is hosted on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) to deliver rapid deployment and the ability to quickly scale to capacity.
When will Adobe Connect Managed Services be generally available?
Adobe Connect Managed Services was released several months ago and general availability was announced in June 2011. Customers have been successfully using ACMS since late 2010.
How would I describe Adobe Connect Managed Services to my customers?
ACMS is an alternative deployment option enabling organizations to deploy and customize Adobe Connect to meet their requirements in an Adobe-managed environment that reduces cost and complexity.
Customers
Why would organizations be interested in Adobe Connect Managed Services?
Organizations would be interested in Adobe Connect Managed Services because it enables them to: • Speed their time to deployment
• Create a highly customized environment
• Eliminate the high overhead cost of systems management • Manage product version upgrades
• Control the schedule of maintenance events
What types of customers would be interested in Adobe Connect Managed Services?
• Customers with an inability or lack of interest to manage infrastructure on their own premises
• Customers with special technology requirements, such as Single Sign-On, or special customization needs • Customers facing upgrade limitations or desiring to control future upgrades to their infrastructure • Hosted customers who have special security or performance requirements, or special up-time needs • Volume loadings which could endanger hosted systems
I’ve heard the cloud is effective to help SMB customers deploy solutions, should I be changing my customer targets?
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When talking to customers, what are some of the requirements to listen for that might make them a good candidate for Adobe Connect Managed Services?
• Customers who want more control of the upgrade timing of their environments • Customers who want a Hosted deployment but require Video Telephony Conferencing (VTC) tie-ins, LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) integration capability, or specialized Single Sign-On (SSO) • Customers who are looking to outsource software management but who have special or specific requirements for their deployments, which prevent the use of the Adobe Connect Hosted solution • Customers who want to rely less on their own internal IT for support of Adobe Connect applications including installation, maintenance, backup, and upgrades • Customers who understand the value Adobe Connect provides, but are concerned or having difficulty getting applications up and running, or customizing applications on schedule for the business
Platform
Will Adobe Connect Managed Services be available in all geographies?
Adobe Connect runs on the Amazon EC2 platform, so it is available in five major global locations today (North America West, North America East, EMEA, Singapore, and Japan). Amazon has informed Adobe that more locations will be available in the future; please contact Mitch Nelson at [email protected] for more information.
What does “in the cloud” mean?
Cloud or cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. Public cloud systems generally refer to hosting services which are broadly available and have a high degree of availability and redundancy. Adobe Connect Managed Services operates on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), one of the largest and most reliable public compute clouds in existence. Adobe Connect Managed Services is not currently available on other cloud solutions.
What is a staging server and when do my customers need one?
The staging server is a system that allows the customer to test changes to their existing environment prior to implementing them on the production cluster. The staging server is especially desirable for those who are making software changes to the ACMS solution, integrating the solution into their own back-end systems, developing custom pods, or running unusual meetings in high load-situations. The staging server is not designed to have production meeting loads, is not deployed in a failover structure, and is not covered by Adobe SLAs.
Product
What Adobe Connect elements can be deployed as an Adobe Connect Managed Service?
All major functionality that is available either on premise or hosted are available as a Managed Service. This includes not only our Meetings, Seminar Rooms, and Training, but also the Events and Authoring capabilities. Only the Adobe Connect Webcast offering is not available as a Managed Service.
What are the room sizing limitations of Adobe Connect Managed Services?
ACMS follows the same sizing guidelines as our hosted offering in its standard offering. Specifically, Adobe Connect Managed Services has a standard 100-person meeting room and 600-person seminar room contractual limits. Under certain circumstances, these limits can be increased to meet customer needs, please contact Mitch Nelson at [email protected] for more information.
What are the overall sizing limitations of Adobe Connect Managed Services?
What about maintenance and support services for Adobe Connect Managed Services?
Platinum Support for Adobe Connect Managed Services is included as a part of all ACMS deals, as is access to all maintenance releases. The maintenance release installation is handled by the ACMS team at a time of the customer's choosing. The purchase of additional maintenance and support services are not required. However, the purchase of Advantage Platinum support is highly recommended and encouraged.
How secure is Adobe Connect Managed Services in the cloud?
ACMS offers security features in several areas including physical security, network control, user access, and data protection. When properly configured, these applications are at least as secure as a customer facing on-premise deployment. • For physical security, Amazon data centers are managed and secured with top-tier physical access barriers to prevent unauthorized access to the data center. These include biometrics, mantraps, perimeter security, etc. • Network security is managed for the system as a whole by Amazon and includes monitoring elements. The customer will have several options available in order to restrict incoming traffic to the Amazon instances running their applications. Customers will be able to filter incoming traffic based on IP address or port level controls. Additionally, customers will have the ability to securely access back-end systems over the SSH tunnel. • For user access, customers will have a unique login/password giving them limited access to only Adobe Connect. All other user access will be controlled with no access to the OS level. No root access will be required by the customer to run and manage Adobe Connect applications. Access for the installation or customization of software is available during the development and staging phases of the system rollout, but this password access is withdrawn when the system is placed into production.
• For data protection, the system uses encryption mechanism used on all data at rest in the database and all backups. For additional details on security, please refer to the Adobe Connect Managed Services Overview at www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect.
How reliable is Adobe Connect Managed Services in the cloud?
Adobe quotes an uptime of 99.9% for our deployment of Adobe Connect in the cloud.
How does the customer benefit from the Adobe Connect Managed Services capability to scale on-the-fly scaling as needed to meet customer load?
• We can also dynamically expand the system if the customer is just plain running a lot of load through the system, which is much more desirable than simply locking the system into a given position and yielding poor performance above that mark.
• The customer also benefits from the fact that, by keeping their system footprint as small as possible, we are able to deliver the system to them at the lowest possible cost, while still delivering full performance. • The ACMS systems do not operate with set caps for most variables, allowing customers to expand their
use of the system as they need it. Because of this customers do not find themselves artificially limited in a meeting by their license purchase. While it should be noted that operating beyond the scope of the license is outside the TOS and not covered by our SLA, we still want to make sure that we provide a good operating environment.
• Finally, by keeping the number of servers down, we make the others available in the general cloud pool, where they are used by others (because of its spot market sales, the Amazon cloud has near 100% utilization) and the servers are not uselessly using electrons to generate heat.
I have heard that the Adobe Connect Managed Services system runs with unlimited licenses. How does that work?
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Can a customer request dedicated hardware?
Yes, dedicated virtual hardware is our standard. Actually, all ACMS solutions today are run on both virtually and physically dedicated hardware at Amazon. However, dedicated physical hardware is not something we can guarantee to customers, as this may change in the future. We recommend spending the time talking the customer through the security of an Amazon virtual server.
Where is the data stored and will it be replicated to other locations (and why)?
Data is stored in Elastic Block Store (EBS) architectures in an encrypted fashion (think NAS). It is backed up to the Amazon Simple Storage Solution (S3) (think SAN) while still encrypted. The S3 information is stored in what might be thought of as a massive RAID-ish structure across all of the Availability Zones (AZ) within a given cloud region. In the event that the AZ the customer cluster is based in fails, we will recover the cluster over to an alternate AZ and recover the system, using the local RAID-ish stripes of the S3 system to recreate the EBS files. The data never moves between different cloud regions (i.e. EMEA to U.S. East does not happen) unless the customer specifically does this via customization. Different customer systems in different regions actually use different encryption keys, so it is impossible for Adobe to move files between clusters without special requests and procedures. For additional information on backup and disaster recovery, please see the overview on the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect.
For the Adobe Connect applications that we will be supporting in the cloud, are there any limitations my customers need to know about regarding their capabilities running a SaaS deployment compared to an on-premise one?
The Adobe Connect applications will have all the same product functionality as the on-premise application. The system is limited to one terabyte total memory (including both active storage and all backups) and 500 gigabytes of input to and output from the system (this does not include traffic between servers in the cluster).
Selling
When should I introduce Adobe Connect Managed Services to my prospect or customer?
Based on the models available today, ACMS can be suitable for prospects or customers interested in Adobe Connect who want the flexibility of on-premise but the ease of a hosted service. ACMS focuses on high degrees of availability, security, scalability, customization flexibility, and convenience without tying up critical customer IT resources.
When should I not introduce Adobe Connect Managed Services to my prospect or customer?
ACMS should not be offered to the following:
• Very small accounts with limited budgets who would not be able to afford the $75,000 minimum • Accounts which require FISMA certification
• Accounts that need versions of Adobe Connect prior to Adobe Connect version 8 For more information on these points, contact Mitch Nelson at [email protected].
How is Adobe Connect Managed Services priced?
ACMS is offered as an annual subscription—similar to, but simpler than Adobe Connect Hosted. This pricing is available within the Adobe Connect quote tool and on InField. Adobe hosted Managed Services are not available using perpetual licenses. Customers who have this requirement should be directed to our Connect Solutions partner's excellent solution that makes use of perpetual licenses.
How is Adobe Connect Managed Services SKU'd?
For more information
Product details:
www.adobe.com/products/ adobeconnect
Which modules are included with Adobe Connect Managed Services at no charge?
The Events module and Authoring are included with ACMS at no additional charge.
Is there a minimum order size and what is it?
Adobe Connect Managed Services is available only with a minimum order size of $75,000 after discounting. This total may not include stagging servers, additional storage/IO, TAMs, or other Adobe products.
How do Adobe Connect Managed Services list prices compare against Adobe Connect Hosted?
ACMS is offered as a premium product compared to Adobe Connect Hosted. Adobe believes that the increased flexibility and customizability of the product provides a significant additional value above and beyond Adobe Connect Hosted.
How will I get compensated for Adobe Connect Managed Services?
ACMS is compensated at the M1 rate. Sales is also eligible for compensation at the time of sale for two-year contracts if both the first and second year are prepaid. All subsequent years (three+) will be paid at the applicable year of service. If a customer pays for a one-year deal, but then renews and pays for year two at the start of that year, renewal compensation will be at the M1 rate as well.
How do partners get compensated for selling Adobe Connect Managed Services?
Partners are compensated for ACMS in the same fashion, and at the same percentages, as if they are for selling Adobe Connect Hosted.
Partners
What is the Adobe Connect Managed Services partner strategy?
Partners are encouraged to sell and customize ACMS today as they do with the rest of Adobe Connect. In general, partners will receive the same compensation for selling ACMS as they do for selling the Adobe Connect Hosted product.
Transfers
If customers are using Adobe Connect Hosted or Adobe Connect On-Premise solutions, can they transfer them to Adobe Connect Managed Services? How?
In general, existing customers may transfer their existing Adobe Connect Hosted and Adobe Connect On-Premise accounts to Adobe Connect Managed Services. There is a fee charged for the transfer of data from Adobe Connect Hosted, as there is for any Adobe Connect Hosted transfer (i.e. to Adobe Connect On-Premise). Likewise, accounts may be transferred from ACMS to Adobe Connect On-Premise deployments, should a customer desire this at a later date. Transfer to Adobe Connect Hosted can only be done under special circumstances—please discuss with the BU. Transfers of data files of more than 800GB into ACMS may be difficult; please discuss with the BU.
Customization
Does Adobe Connect Managed Services work with partner or custom-built pods?
Yes, additional pods may be added to the ACMS solution from outside sources.
Summary
Who can I contact for more information or if I have a customer interested in deploying Adobe Connect Managed Services?
