Microsoft’s global partner boss Gavriella Schuster told the assembled throngs at Vole’s Inspire event in Las Vegas that the Cloud has changed the way it had relationships with the Channel.
Schuster said that traditional reselling did not stimulate the levels of trust between the vendor and partners that cloud services managed to capture.
“Let’s face it; our traditional way of partnering was built much more around a supply chain. Microsoft would build some software. A partner might resell it, a partner might integrate it, manage it, deploy it, support it, and it was a series of hand-offs. There wasn’t as much trust inspired in those hand-offs”, she said.
“But cloud services fundamentally change the basis of our relationship. Cloud services collapse that supply chain and require each of us to provide persistent and always-on services to our customers. It blurs the lines between what we do. We no longer have these unique and distinct roles to play. That’s why I believe that we have moved from partner to a partnership because while it may be the technology that brings us together, it is the partnership that keeps us together.”
Schuster said t partners should focus on to maximise growth in their Microsoft business: Microsoft 365, Teams, PowerApps, Dynamics 365, Azure Migration and AI.
It revealed the Azure Migration Programme, which it said will help customers accelerate their journey to Azure, and offer “proactive advice and tools to help mitigate risks and address common issues associated with moving workloads to the cloud”.
Microsoft also announced Azure Lighthouse, which it says gives partners a “single control plane” to view and manage Azure at scale across all their customers.
In a press release, Micorosft said Lighthouse had been designed with partners and for partners.
“Azure Lighthouse builds partners in by design into Azure by enabling multi-customer, multi-tenant management at scale in a secure environment with automation so that Azure becomes your best platform to deliver those managed services to your customers.” Schuster added: “We’re going to continue to invest in that service for you.”
Microsoft also announced a host of updates for Teams and Dynamics 365 which is growing like topsy – and doing better than SharePoint did a decade ago.
