By Ron Grattopp 
….Just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share this, basically in a partner’s own words how they came to do a “180” regarding the Office 365 opportunity for their business. This comes from an editorial in an SMB-focused newsletter called WServerNews, which has been around quite a while serving the small business partner community.
If you’ve heard the phrase “enough said” I think it perfectly fits here, so I’m just going to quote an excerpt from the article (by a guest contributor, Kelsey Epps, called “Getting Started with Office 365”):
“First Thoughts
When I first heard that Microsoft was going to be offering services in the cloud, I was mad. My initial thoughts were all negative and I didn’t see any good coming of this. I was concerned that small business clients that I was supporting would leave me and go to Microsoft. How can I compete with what they are offering?
It has been quite the opposite for me. Office 365 has helped to grow my business and opened more revenue streams. I not only resell Office 365, I plan, implement and support it as well. This has tremendous benefits for me as a single employee side business.
The benefits for my small business clients have been tenfold. Most of the companies (less than 50 employees) that I support would not have the resources and support personal to implement the services from Office 365 in a highly available fashion. This is where I think that Microsoft has the clear advantage over bringing the service in house.”
Here’s a link to WServerNews if you want to try and find and read the rest of the editorial, but as I said above, IMHO this is an example of enough said, and it’s coming directly from a small business partner (apparently a one-man shop), I just don’t think it gets more credible than that. FYI, his editorial goes on to give more practical tips on how to get started with Office 365 but to me the real story is what you see above. Sure we’ve been telling you about the partner opportunity around Office 365 (and BPOS before that) but, frankly, I think Kelsey nails it, and hearing it “from the trenches” is so much better than from Microsoft, so thought I’d share. And my thanks to WServerNews for putting this story out to encourage and help other small partners to take advantage of this opportunity as well.
Cheers,
Ron