---
title: "Running Pre-Sales Demos on the Public Cloud: Ingredients of a Winning PoC"
description: "Running Pre-Sales Demos on the Public Cloud: Ingredients of a Winning PoC"
image: https://blog.quali.com/hubfs/All-weather_running_track-924x440.jpg
---

[![logo](https://blog.quali.com/hs-fs/hubfs/logo.png?width=120&height=36&name=logo.png "logo")](https://www.quali.com/)

- SOLUTIONS 
    - [DEVOPS CLOUD AUTOMATION](https://www.quali.com/solutions/devops-environments/)
    - [TEST ENVIRONMENTS](https://www.quali.com/solutions/software-test-environments-as-a-service/)
    - [LAB AS A SERVICE](https://www.quali.com/solutions/network-and-security-dev-test-lab-as-a-service/)
    - [SALES DEMO/VIRTUAL POC](https://www.quali.com/solutions/sales-demos-virtual-poc-environments/)
    - [CYBER RANGE ENVIRONMENTS](https://www.quali.com/solutions/cyber-range-environments/)
    - [VIRTUAL TRAINING LABS](https://www.quali.com/solutions/virtual-training-labs/)
- [PRODUCTS](https://www.quali.com/cloudshell-platform/) 
    - [CloudShell Pro](https://www.quali.com/cloudshell-pro/) 
          - [Product](https://www.quali.com/cloudshell-pro/)
          - [Community](https://www.quali.com/community/)
          - [University](https://www.quali.com/university/)
          - [Support](https://support.quali.com/)
    - [CloudShell Colony \[NEW\]](https://www.quali.com/cloudshell-colony/) 
          - [Product](https://www.quali.com/cloudshell-colony/)
          - [Request Free Trial](https://app.cloudshellcolony.com/sign_up?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Ffreedcamp.com%2FJacobs_Work_Projects_gNM%2FQuali_7GO%2Ftodos%2F25066065%2F&__hstc=208618317.2af89ba750e0bbc1c35b7c40ea6ff838.1567174142272.1567174142272.1567174142272.1&__hssc=208618317.1.1567174142272&__hsfp=1037199243)
          - [Login](https://app.cloudshellcolony.com/login?__hstc=208618317.2af89ba750e0bbc1c35b7c40ea6ff838.1567174142272.1567174142272.1567174142272.1&__hssc=208618317.1.1567174142272&__hsfp=1037199243)
- [CUSTOMERS](https://www.quali.com/customers/)
- [RESOURCES](https://www.quali.com/resource-center/) 
    - [Blog](https://blog.quali.com/blog/)
    - Financial Services 
          - [Financial Services Application Continuous Delivery](https://www.quali.com/financial-services-application-continuous-delivery/)
          - [Infrastructure Environments for Banks and Financial Services](https://www.quali.com/environment-as-service-for-banks-finserv/)
    - [FAQ](https://www.quali.com/faq/)
    - [Resource Library](https://www.quali.com/resource-center/)
- [COMPANY](https://www.quali.com/about-us/) 
    - [About Us](https://www.quali.com/about-us/)
    - [Leadership](https://www.quali.com/about-us/#management)
    - [News and Events](https://www.quali.com/about-us/news-events/)
    - [Partners](https://www.quali.com/partners/)
    - [Locations](https://www.quali.com/about-us/#locations)
    - [Careers](https://www.quali.com/about-us/careers/)
    - [Awards](https://www.quali.com/awards/)
- [CONTACT US](https://info.quali.com/contact-us)

### Blog

Stay up to date with blogs written by experts in the fields of cloud automation, infrastructure orchestration, and devops.

### Running Pre-Sales Demos on the Public Cloud: Ingredients of a Winning PoC

# Running Pre-Sales Demos on the Public Cloud: Ingredients of a Winning PoC

![header-picture](https://blog.quali.com/hubfs/All-weather_running_track-924x440.jpg "header-picture")

**Author:**  
Pascal Joly

**Published:**  
March 22, 2019

**Share it:**

- <https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://blog.quali.com/blog/running-pre-sales-demos-on-the-public-cloud-ingredients-of-a-winning-poc>
- <https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://blog.quali.com/blog/running-pre-sales-demos-on-the-public-cloud-ingredients-of-a-winning-poc&title=&summary=&source=>
- <https://twitter.com/home?status=>
- [mailto:?&subject=https://blog.quali.com/blog/running-pre-sales-demos-on-the-public-cloud-ingredients-of-a-winning-poc&body=https://blog.quali.com/blog/running-pre-sales-demos-on-the-public-cloud-ingredients-of-a-winning-poc](mailto:?&subject=https://blog.quali.com/blog/running-pre-sales-demos-on-the-public-cloud-ingredients-of-a-winning-poc&body=https://blog.quali.com/blog/running-pre-sales-demos-on-the-public-cloud-ingredients-of-a-winning-poc)

![header-picture](https://blog.quali.com/hubfs/All-weather_running_track-924x440.jpg "header-picture")

"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." Sales Engineers engaging in high stakes demos are familiar with this saying. One of the most stressful moments they experience during customer PoCs happens actually before the demo. Is everything ready? Until recently, preparing the infrastructure for a technical product demo involved reserving and shipping some hardware, connecting these servers or appliances to the network and configuring everything end to end. We're talking weeks or possibly months of planning ahead of the actual "D" day with delays pretty much a given, lost shipment and unresolved IT tickets highly probable.

Then came virtualization and public cloud infrastructure.

## Demos on the Public Cloud: a turning point with a few caveats

 

![2019-03-21-18_25_35-Microsoft-Azure-Marketplace](https://blog.quali.com/hs-fs/hubfs/2019-03-21-18_25_35-Microsoft-Azure-Marketplace.png?width=832&name=2019-03-21-18_25_35-Microsoft-Azure-Marketplace.png)

Public cloud was a turning point for many sales engineers in the tech world. With unlimited on-demand capacity, Infrastructure as a Service is as simple as doing online shopping: there is no need to be technically advanced to deploy a virtual machine needed for a demo in [Azure](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/), AWS or Google Cloud, to name a few. Sales engineers were finally blessed with all the ingredients for a winning PoC.

Not so fast. Complains coming from the various stakeholders involved in the process were quick to emerge:

- **IT admin:** "I want to know what's happening in the infrastructure, cloud or not, so I can't relinquish the control to some random SE's credit card account. I should be the one in charge!"
- **CIO, CFO:** "I want to understand why my infra spending have been skyrocketing since these sales engineers have been using the public cloud."
- **Sales engineer:** "I can't figure out how to build these demos when I have more than one VM involved. takes too much time and I always need help."

Was this line: "just run your demos on public cloud" too good to be true? Seems like we were missing a cheerleader team after all.

## Overcoming the Hurdles with Self-Service Environments

 

![athletics-659233_960_720](https://blog.quali.com/hs-fs/hubfs/athletics-659233_960_720.jpg?width=832&name=athletics-659233_960_720.jpg)

 

Have you ever dreamt of a self-service platform that let pre-sales engineers dynamically deploy their demo environments on the public cloud, no matter how complex they are, and clean them up after the demo is complete? If only...

It turns out Quali's [CloudShell](https://www.quali.com/cloudshell-pro/) has been designed to natively offers these features on the private or public cloud of your choice. It recently came in the limelight with a [case study](https://customers.microsoft.com/en-us/story/quali-skybox-security-cloudshell-azure-automation) published by partner Microsoft on a joint customer win ([Skybox security](https://customers.microsoft.com/en-us/story/quali-skybox-security-cloudshell-azure-automation)). Nothing better than a real customer story to illustrate the point.

CloudShell provided Skybox a few key ingredients to enable their sales team demo their solution on the Azure public cloud effectively:

- **Advanced blueprint modeling** with standard building blocks using native Azure Marketplace images or cloud services.
- **Automated deployment of VMs** with out-of-the-box network and security configuration.
- **Self-service** approach with demos organized in categories for easy access by multiple teams.
- **Simple,** visual interaction with the demo environment to access the resources and showcase the value of the solution.
- **Time-bound environments:** once the demo is complete the infrastructure is automatically cleaned up: no more ghost VMs, subnets or leftover storage sucking up IT budgets.
- **Enterprise-ready** and multi-tenant to scale up as your team grows.

 

![2019-03-21-19_29_39-Microsoft-Edge](https://blog.quali.com/hs-fs/hubfs/2019-03-21-19_29_39-Microsoft-Edge.png?width=832&name=2019-03-21-19_29_39-Microsoft-Edge.png)

 

Now that we're back on the right track, why stop here? Environment-as-Service have been used in many similar use cases such as a training platform for internal employees, cyber range, marketing team or even for the support team to reproduce bugs.

Before you catch your breath, make sure you download our [solution brief](https://blog.quali.com/hubfs/Solution-Brief-Accelerating%20Sales%20Demos%20and%20POCs%20with%20Environments-as-a-Service.pdf) on this topic or (no pun intended) [schedule a demo!](https://info.quali.com/accelerate-technical-sales-through-self-service-demos)

 

- Posted by Pascal Joly on March 22, 2019
- About Author: Pascal is the Director of Business Development at Quali, providing leadership for strategic business development initiatives with key technology vendors and channel partners. He has over 20 years of experience in large and small companies building and architecting software solutions for complex network and cloud infrastructure deployments.

 Topics: [Automation](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/automation), [Cloud and Virtualization](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/cloud-and-virtualization), [Sales Clouds](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/sales-clouds), [demo PoC](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/demo-poc)

By Sean Harris - 22 March, 2019

#### 4 Major Business Problems Solved by Infrastructure Automation

[![read more](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/685080/IMG-TurboSodium/Sodium%20v2/blog/arrow-recent-blog-post.png "read more")](https://blog.quali.com/blog/4-major-business-problems-solved-by-infrastructure-automation)

By Pascal Joly - 22 March, 2019

#### Infrastructure Automation at Scale: Blueprinting vs. Terraform

[![read more](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/685080/IMG-TurboSodium/Sodium%20v2/blog/arrow-recent-blog-post.png "read more")](https://blog.quali.com/blog/environment-as-a-service-blueprinting-vs.-terraform)

By Sean Harris - 22 March, 2019

#### Why Infrastructure Automation Is Critical for Cyber Security

[![read more](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/685080/IMG-TurboSodium/Sodium%20v2/blog/arrow-recent-blog-post.png "read more")](https://blog.quali.com/blog/why-infrastructure-automation-is-critical-for-cyber-security)

### Recent Posts

### Posts by Topic

- [DevOps (69)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/devops)
- [Sales Demo (24)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/sales-demo)
- [Dev/Test (21)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/dev-test)
- [Automation (12)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/automation)
- [infrastructure automation (12)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/infrastructure-automation)
- [Environment as a Service (11)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/environment-as-a-service)
- [colony (9)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/colony)
- [ci/cd pipeline (6)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/ci-cd-pipeline)
- [demo PoC (6)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/demo-poc)
- [Qualifyi (5)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/qualifyi)
- [Continuous Integration/Delivery (4)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/continuous-integration-delivery)
- [Lab as a Service (4)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/lab-as-a-service)
- [cloudshell pro (4)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/cloudshell-pro)
- [Cloud and Virtualization (3)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/cloud-and-virtualization)
- [Cyber Range (3)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/cyber-range)
- ["infrastructure as code" (2)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/infrastructure-as-code)
- [Sales Clouds (2)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/sales-clouds)
- [Sales Demo/PoC (2)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/sales-demo-poc)
- [Test & Test Lab Automation (2)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/test-test-lab-automation)
- [application release (2)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/application-release)
- ["trial demo" (1)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/trial-demo)
- [DevOps/Agile IT (1)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/devopsagile-it)
- [DevSecOps (1)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/devsecops)
- [Events (1)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/events)
- [JFrog (1)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/jfrog)
- [Product Release (1)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/product-release)
- [SDN & NFV (1)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/sdn-nfv)
- [SDN & NFV & Networking (1)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/sdn-nfv-networking)
- [Security (1)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/security)
- [TechBlog (1)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/techblog)
- [artifactory (1)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/artifactory)
- [continuous testing (1)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/continuous-testing)
- [continuous validation (1)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/continuous-validation)
- [parallel delivery (1)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/parallel-delivery)
- [repository (1)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/repository)
- [salesforce (1)](https://blog.quali.com/blog/topic/salesforce)

View More

 

#### 4 Major Business Problems Solved by Infrastructure Automation

Every company and organization that develops software and applications needs environments. As they race toward innovating new products and...

[Read More](https://blog.quali.com/blog/4-major-business-problems-solved-by-infrastructure-automation)

 

#### Infrastructure Automation at Scale: Blueprinting vs. Terraform

\[This blog was originally published in November of 2019 and updated with new content in May of 2021.\] Whether you are a software architect,...

[Read More](https://blog.quali.com/blog/environment-as-a-service-blueprinting-vs.-terraform)

 

#### Why Infrastructure Automation Is Critical for Cyber Security

Revelations about the recent SolarWinds hack have highlighted the evolving sophistication and growing effectiveness of cyber attacks,...

[Read More](https://blog.quali.com/blog/why-infrastructure-automation-is-critical-for-cyber-security)

##### **Join 11,000+** CIOs, CTOs, ITOps, and DevOps practitioners on our newsletter and blog list

 Emails once or twice a week on cloud automation, infrastructure orchestration, and DevOps 

![](https://blog.quali.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Blue%20Arrow%201.png?width=69&name=Blue%20Arrow%201.png)

![footer-curve](https://blog.quali.com/hubfs/footer-curve.png "footer-curve")

### About Quali

Quali provides the leading platform for Infrastructure Automation at Scale. Global 2000 enterprises and innovators everywhere rely on Quali’s award-winning CloudShell platform to create self-service, on-demand automation solutions that increase engineering productivity, cut cloud costs, and optimize infrastructure utilization.

### Media Contacts

**PR**     pr AT quali.com

![](https://www.quali.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/logo-quali.png)

Quali is the industry leader in delivering cloud-agnostic Environment as a Service (EaaS) solutions for development and testing, sales demo/POC, training, and cyber range teams. Global 500 OEMs, ISVs, financial services, retailers, and innovators everywhere rely on Quali’s award-winning CloudShell platform to create self-service, on-demand environments that cut cloud costs, optimize infrastructure utilization, and increase productivity.

SOLUTIONS

[DevOps Cloud Automation](https://blog.quali.com/solutions/devops-environments/)

[Test Environments](https://blog.quali.com/solutions/software-test-environments-as-a-service/)

[Lab as a Service](https://blog.quali.com/solutions/network-and-security-dev-test-lab-as-a-service/)

[Sales Demos/Virtual PoCs](https://blog.quali.com/solutions/sales-demos-virtual-poc-environments/)

[Cyber Range Environments](https://blog.quali.com/solutions/cyber-range-environments/)

[Virtual Training Labs](https://blog.quali.com/solutions/virtual-training-labs/)

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

[Financial Services Application Continuous Delivery](https://blog.quali.com/solutions/financial-services-application-continuous-delivery/)

[Lab as a Service for Banks](https://blog.quali.com/solutions/environment-as-service-for-banks-finserv/)

PRODUCTS

[CloudShell Pro](https://blog.quali.com/cloudshell-pro/)

[- Community](https://blog.quali.com/community/)

[- University](https://blog.quali.com/university/)

[- Support](https://blog.quali.com/community/support/)

[- Integrations](https://community.quali.com/integrations)

[CloudShell Colony](https://blog.quali.com/cloudshell-colony/)

[- Product](https://community.quali.com/integrations)

[- Integrations](https://community.quali.com/integrations)

[- Login](https://community.quali.com/integrations)

[PRICING](https://info.quali.com/pricing)

RESOURCES

[Resource Center](https://blog.quali.com/resource-center/)

[Blog](https://blog.quali.com/blog/)

[FAQ](https://blog.quali.com/faq/)

COMPANY

[About Us](https://blog.quali.com/about-us/)

[Why Quali](https://blog.quali.com/why-quali/)

[Customers](https://blog.quali.com/customers/)

[Leadership](https://blog.quali.com/about-us/#leadership)

[Newsroom](https://blog.quali.com/about-us/newsroom/)

[Locations](https://blog.quali.com/about-us/#locations)

[Careers](https://blog.quali.com/about-us/careers/)

[Awards](https://blog.quali.com/about-us/#awards)

[PARTNERS](https://blog.quali.com/partners/)

LEGAL

[Legal](https://blog.quali.com/legal/)

[Privacy Policy](https://blog.quali.com/qualiprivacypolicy/)

[Cookie Notice](https://blog.quali.com/cookie-notice)

INFO

[Contact Us](https://info.quali.com/contact-us)

**+1 877 QUALI 10**  
**[info@quali.com](mailto:info@quali.com)**

© Qualisystems LTD 2020

![](https://www.bizographics.com/collect/?pid=7400&fmt=gif)