John Farrer Right Networks
Editor's Note: This is another profile in our series of exclusive interviews with some of the accounting industry's leading executives and thought leaders.
Before co-founding Right Networks, John Farrer spent the early days of his career architecting scalable server and network infrastructure that operated out of multi-site data centers for large Fortune 500 corporations.
Insightful Accountant sat down with John to get his thoughts on what the future looks like for the Right Networks brand.
Give us a snapshot of the Right Networks brand.
Before Right Networks, I spent my early career architecting scalable server and network infrastructure operating out of multi-site data centers for large Fortune 500 corporations – like Bell Atlantic and NYNEX Yellow Pages. In short, I had experience with hosting technology and infrastructure: the building blocks for cloud.
In 2002, when we founded Right Networks, one of our first clients was a CPA firm that was looking to host QuickBooks Desktop software in the cloud. They wanted an easy and secure way to access the application and their client data from multiple physical locations – office or home, etc.
The early 2000s was the start of true virtualization, and the team and I developed a way to virtualize the QuickBooks Desktop application and host it in a centralized, enterprise-class server environment. By using this cloud-based virtualized QuickBooks Desktop solution, our clients could gain the “best of all worlds” – accessing the same accounting software and suite of advanced features they were familiar with, but in a centralized and secure cloud hosted environment, available anywhere, 24x7.
It quickly became clear that this virtualized cloud solution not only worked, but could also help other accounting professionals and CPA firms evolve and connect better to their clients. This is how HyperRight™, Right Networks’ proprietary cloud virtualization technology, was born. HyperRight™ is a unique virtualization layer within the Right Networks cloud.
It virtualizes a single tenant QuickBooks Desktop application into an enterprise-class, hosted, multi-tenant service. It’s a secure and highly available cloud service that can be delivered with scale and assured performance just like the desktop version.
Within our first year, Right Networks was serving 14 CPA firms and accounting professionals and "we were off." Today, Right Networks has more than 100,000 clients with access to more than 150 business applications, more than 10 times the customers of our closest competitor.
Talk a little about the importance of building relationships today with your customers.
Because small businesses rarely have dedicated IT staff, they rely on their cloud provider to provide excellent customer support around the clock – especially during busy seasons. For Right Networks, delivering value to our customers is critical. We’re dedicated to providing 24/7/365 support to customers spanning the globe. We are a collaborative and customer-driven business, highlighted by our recent award at Accountex 2017 where we were recognized by customers, receiving the “User Favorite Cloud Hosting Award” for highest customer satisfaction.
What are the biggest questions you get about cloud accounting today?
Can I keep my favorite accounting software? – By helping our customers move their everyday accounting and business applications (like QuickBooks Desktop or Microsoft Office) into the cloud, we can eliminate concern about factors such as servers, backups or adding storage and simultaneously enable businesses and teams to work together from anywhere, at any time.
We also host 150-plus applications, including popular third-party business apps like Bill.com, True Commerce, Tallie, Method, Avalara, Expensify, Webgility, Activate, Atandra and TSheets. And we manage all application updates in our cloud so our customers don’t have to.
What are the biggest benefits of the cloud? – Anytime, anywhere access and increased productivity and flexibility for accounting professionals.
What are the cost benefits of the cloud? – With cloud-hosted services, there’s no need for our customers to maintain hardware and software patches themselves. That becomes our responsibility. IT maintenance, service and security can be costly, especially when it’s self-service. When you find a trusted cloud provider like Right Networks, these responsibilities are proactively managed and maintained by our trained team of experts.
How secure is the Right Networks cloud? – At Right Networks, our cloud is protected by the very latest security technology, hosting our customer data in premier data centers (the same that are used by multinational corporations and big banks).
How is my data protected? – With Right Networks hosting, our customers’ data is protected by multiple layers of security. Encryption, firewalls, multi-layer access controls, backups — all these tools are used to keep data and applications safe with 99.999 percent uptime. Physically, we maintain multiple dedicated data centers that are more than 2,000 miles apart from each other.
These data centers have redundant network connectivity, power systems, including multiple power grids, redundant UPS backup, state of the art biometric security controls, 24x7 security guards, and onsite power generation to ensure the Right Networks stays up and online.
What do you expect to see from the accounting space as we head further into 2017 and into 2018?
Moving into 2018, we see cloud adoption accelerating for CPAs.
According to a recent CPA of the Future survey, 90 percent of accountants agree that the delivery of digital business processes to clients via the cloud will become a key differentiator among accounting firms in the next five years. Accounting professionals who deploy leading-edge, cloud-based accounting software-as-a-service (SaaS) have a greater opportunity to accomplish their business goals and drive growth than those who continue to rely on outdated technologies.
Heading into 2018 and beyond, I believe that CPAs and SMBs will continue to take advantage of cloud technology and its scalable infrastructure and productivity-enhancing software to manage their operations and fuel their business to a new era of growth.
What does the small business community look like?
Recently, we polled more than 360 SMBs about their attitudes about cloud accounting in our first "Right Networks Cloud Impact Survey." Accounting professionals were asked to identify the top benefits of cloud-hosted solutions on a one-to-ten scale, the collaborative “anywhere, anytime” benefits of the cloud topped the list.
Collaboration is a key advantage that the cloud has over premise-based (onsite) accounting software. Cloud-based solutions can help small businesses work more efficiently and productively with a streamlined workflow and enhanced client communication.
At Right Networks, we also spend substantial time focused on the security, reliability and availability of our cloud. We understand that SMBs often don’t have the resources and technology to maintain the high level of system availability, cyber protection and data recovery needed for financial software and data in today’s world.
What are the biggest challenges (and trends) you see your clients facing?
Clients face the challenge of keeping up with and adopting new technology, like cloud computing, to efficiently service their client base and compete with other firms. Our clients have found that adopting the cloud frees up more time to interact with current and prospective clients, resulting in better client retention and acquisition. You can read more about our customers on our Success Stories webpage.
What’s the next "best thing" for Right Networks?
In 2018, Right Networks is excited to begin rolling out cloud-solution bundles so accountants and CPA firms can have access to the software and business applications they love – all in one place and for a lower cost.
We are also proud to be an Intuit Premier Reseller and are currently offering cloud-hosted QuickBooks Desktop 2018 licenses to our customers. We guide our customers through the license transition (a quick and easy process in the cloud) so they can pick up where they left off. Many customers find this one stop shop to be an easy and convenient way to both purchase and cloud-enable QuickBooks Desktop.
What should every accounting professional know about Right Networks?
Right Networks is the only company endorsed by both Intuit and Thomson Reuters for our cloud-hosting solution; it is truly the best option for CPA firms, accounting professionals and small businesses making the move to the cloud. We are a one-of-a-kind, virtualized cloud solution provider with the ability to host QuickBooks Desktop in the cloud – making the switch to the cloud easy and fast. Our cloud offers are focused on cloud-connecting accounting professionals to their clients, and we have offers for any stage business.