So we are into day 2 of Microsoft’s World Wide Partner Conference with the Devices theme and Office 365 dominating the morning sessions.
For the first time there was no vision key note as it was felt that delegates wanted more opportunity to browse the exhibition halls and find potential new partners.
There is no doubt that the cloud story is gaining momentum with the subscriptions for Office 365 on the rise. However what is interesting to note is that when you look at some of the data the largest seller of this technology is Microsoft themselves. The online portals do make it easy to buy even when partners have made efforts to show the value. There are some clear and present channel conflicts here.
Microsoft is trying to address this by enabling customers to work with partners and be billed in one simple invoice for all the services provided. For Office 365 this was limited to one SKU however this year announcements have been made that will expand this to the Enterprise, Public Sector and Academic customers. The devil as always is in the detail and it will be interesting to see if buying direct or through the channel is an apples with apples comparison.
You may be familiar with Microsoft’s branding of the Cloud OS. In summary the Cloud OS enables customers to make investment decisions based upon:
- Datacentres without boundaries
- Cloud Innovation Everywhere
- Dynamic Application Delivery
- Flexible and Consistent Application Platforms
- Enables People Centric IT
Windows Server 2012 R2 is now in pre-release and is a fundamental component for this story.
This preview version is less than 12 months since the Server 12 Launch and is not to fix bugs or holes as it is widely regarded as a success story and Microsoft’s best Server OS. However with this rate of change come challenges.
There are two main reasons why customers don’t upgrade as by doing so will either break the infrastructure or break the application therefore you may think that by releasing new versions would only compound the problem however a core theme for these releases is the ability to add value through more features whilst not disrupting applications. Fine balance but every effort is being made to achieve it.
The Microsoft Management team has also had a reshuffle with the priority and focus on working with Partners and Customers who want to fully benefit from the Microsoft platforms whether this be on or off premise. This is good news for all as ensuring that the focus remains on solving customer problems is a key for successful business outcomes.
This power of this year’s event, for me, has been the people I have been able to meet with and share experiences. I mentioned yesterday that partners will have to collaborate more if they are to continue to provide end to end value for customers and the quality of these conversations, I’m sure will enable our business to do this to an even greater extent.
Keep providing feedback and follow our twitter feed @EACSltd