Overview

pCloudShare makes the easiest-to-use labs virtual for software training, sales demos and POCS. CloudShare provides specialized solutions designed to meet a variety of business needs including lab environments for demos and POCs, virtual training, and development and testing. All CloudShare environments are completely customizable and offer on-demand access to infrastructure resources such as servers, storage, networking and software. /p pCloudShare customers include many leading software and cybersecurity companies such as Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Atlassian, ForgeRock, Sophos and Check Point Software Technologies. /p

Supernova Award Category

Tech Optimization and Modernization

The Problem

pDigital Transformation has had a dramatic impact on businesses when it comes to best practices and processes. As a result, companies must now move faster to compete, be more effective and efficient, and require intelligent, agile methods to scale and maximize growth.  /p pAvi Rembaum is VP of Security Solutions at Check Point Software Technologies, a provider of software and hardware solutions for IT security. Avi’s company needed to accelerate activity in two key areas:/p ul liHelp customers experience new protections against threats/li liMore effectively demonstrate a diverse sales portfolio of solutions that serve network, cloud, endpoint and mobile security/li /ul pTraditional demonstration and proof of concept (PoC) shortfalls include having to maintain an on-premise solution, dealing with travel and shipping, lack of control over content, and the inability to provide hands-on, real-world experiences. Sales PoCs can also be a frustrating blackbox, providing no visibility into user engagement.  /p pCheck Point needed a reliable, always available, high-performance sales and training platform that would truly expedite work, and quickly scale to support 600+ sales engineers, thousands of resellers, 150,000+ customers and millions of end users around the world. They needed to easily conduct simulations, demonstrate various systems operating in parallel and attack scenarios requiring specialized tools, and more./p

The Solution

pCheck Point Software selected CloudShare for more effective training and sales enablement. The platform was able to easily demonstrate how it handles complex network configurations and multiple use cases within the same organization. /p pCloudShare enables sales teams to showcase their software solutions on demand, which provides easily managed demos and PoCs for unlimited users worldwide. The platform also helps spin up specialized cloud solutions for training and other forms of business acceleration - all within minutes. Sales leaders can also:/p ul liManage the sales funnel: Gain real-time visibility into customer activity and engagement so reps can react quickly and effectively;/li liAlign teams: Ensure that everyone is using the same centralized demos and PoCs; and/li liStreamline sales administration: Bring greater cost-efficiency to sales, support and product training by reducing dedicated technical or IT staff requirements./li /ul

The results

pCloudShare's platform helped scale support for over 500 security and sales engineers and thousands of resellers in areas from management to tracking to better understanding the sales cycle./p pSales teams could demo Check Point solutions and third-party systems operating seamlessly in multiple use cases, which is particularly relevant in cloud and advanced threat protection scenarios. A user doesn’t have to build anything from scratch. The environment is easily accessed by users via PartnerMap with single sign on, and other selling tools are already integrated. CloudShare allowed Check Point to create significantly faster field and partner enablement along with limitless capacity to support more sales demos for more people in more places./p p“Working with CloudShare, the entire infrastructure is entirely cloud based. We operate across multiple cloud providers. The interface into our backend systems really allows this to become a process that we manage as a provider to our user, our partner and employee community. Where we can measure the success of it and understand how it benefits our business and where we need to improve,” said Avi Rembaum./p

Metrics

pHere is how Rembaum reports Check Point benefits from its use of the CloudShare platform:/p ul liCustomers experienced accelerated transition to new technologies through immediate availability of labs for training, testing and proof of concept./li liPartners gained a platform for learning technologies without the need to invest in physical labs or contract with separate cloud/software providers./li liPre-sales community benefited from a rich set of pre-configured demos that are always available on a global scale/li liField management is able to track team performance and customer interaction levels/li liFaster field and partner enablement coupled with near limitless capacity to support more demos, for more people, no matter their location./li liThousands of demonstrations are taking place each year from sellers to Check Point customers. /li /ul p“There is no limit to what we can share,” said Rembaum./p

The Technology

pCloudShare’s virtual IT labs let organizations easily replicate complex, on-premise IT environments in the cloud. Specialized solutions for virtual training, sales enablement and sandboxing for testing and support include features and automations that maximize user productivity. Hundreds of companies, including Palo Alto Networks, Atlassian, ForgeRock, Sophos, BWise®, Advanced and Fortinet, rely on CloudShare’s powerful platform daily for a variety of use cases./p

Disruptive Factor

pIn a recent webinar, Holger Mueller, VP and principal analyst at Constellation Research, explained how the necessity of CloudShare's capabilities have led to the creation of a new biztech category: Business Acceleration Cloud (BAC)./p pBAC features purpose-built environments and software designed for applications like sales enablement, virtual training and sandboxing in the cloud. These are not general-purpose commodity clouds – they’re designed to accelerate complex functions and work in particular industries./p pTechnological capabilities have finally caught up to business best practices, so we will see virtual processes replacing physical ones. Current conditions also accelerate these types of changes, making BAC even more necessary for software sales teams who are no longer able to travel./p pCloudShare is built for business users, not IT personnel. It takes care of the complex technical work behind the scenes to greatly increase productivity. Additional benefits include the ability to:/p ul liMigrate exact replicas of the organization’s IT environment to the cloud completely unchanged, regardless of complexity;/li liOffer safe, secure and isolated environments, which can easily revert back to their original state;/li liProvide on-demand access from anywhere with a simple link;/li liSpin up environments in minutes;/li liProvide cost control policies and auto-suspend features to avoid unexpected costs;/li liDeliver full analytics and advanced management/li /ul

Shining Moment

p“We are able to demonstrate all systems working together. We are able to provide this resource to our community of users, sellers and partners that allows this acceleration to take place.” /p p“CloudShare makes it easy for our sales engineers to demonstrate the many different technologies of Check Point around the world with a simple laptop instead of a rack of equipment” /p p~Avi Rembaum/p