An Amazon Web Services executive took a swipe at Microsoft licensing, dubbing it anti-competitive.
AWS’ senior vice president of sales and marketing Matt Garman, wrote on LinkedIn that Microsoft’s “recent licensing rhetoric” is “a troubling admission of the same anti-competitive tactics that many companies have been raising with them for years, but went unheeded until they were put before the European Commission.”
Software King of the World Microsoft has cut jobs in its Azure, security and other business segments.
In a statement, a Microsoft spokesvole said the company still expects to grow its overall headcount as it aligns resources.
“As Microsoft gets ready for the new fiscal year, it is making sure the right resources are aligned to the right opportunity. Microsoft will continue to grow headcount in the year ahead, and we will add additional focus to where those resources go”, the Volester said.
Despite the cuts, multiple Microsoft executives during the event highlighted opportunities for partners to sell customers on the tech giant’s cloud and security offerings, telling partners that the company will make a push this year for packages of cloud products focused on specific industries – such as health care and financial services.
AP Automation outfit Medius has declared that it now has Top Tier partnership status with Microsoft.
Medius was named a Microsoft Gold Partner, for the tenth consecutive year in March 2022, so this is the latest development in a string of successes for the AP Automation company.
Medius has driven 25 percent year-on-year growth in 2022 globally and more than 2,600 customers use Medius solutions across the world, managing transactions worth approximately $180 billion annually, it is claimed.
Software King of the World, Microsoft, has appointed Nicole Dezen as chief partner officer.
The move follows the exit from the building of Vole’s former channel chief Rodney Clark.
Alongside the newly created title, Dezen will hold the position of corporate vice president of global partner solutions, formerly held by Nick Parker who has been promoted to president of industry and partner sales.
Parker said Dezen brings a “unique perspective” to Microsoft’s efforts and a “complete left to right view” of opportunities and challenges facing partners.
He said: “Nicole’s elevation to CPO at Microsoft shows our new, deeper approach to channel and ecosystem leadership and advocacy. Nicole has built two key leadership roles that will report to her.
Banks of lithium-ion batteries at a Microsoft data centre in Dublin are set to be used to help support the growth of renewables on Ireland’s power grid.
Vole says the batteries – which typically provide backup power in case of emergency – have been certified, tested and approved for connection to the grid and are part of the data centre’s UPS.
Grid-interactive UPS systems could allow operator EirGrid to cut two million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2025, according to Baringa, an energy advisory firm commissioned by Microsoft.
Microsoft has promised to change its licensing practices and overall principles to “level the playing field” for local cloud providers in a bid to see off European anti-trust watchdogs.
Brad Smith, Microsoft president, outlined the changes after the Financial Times pointed to the potential for new antitrust action against the company in Europe. Critics said the company was tying Windows and Office to Azure to fuel its cloud growth.
The changes include the ability for European cloud providers to offer Windows and Office on a hosted basis as part of their own solutions, independent of Microsoft’s cloud platform.
Microsoft’s channel boss Rodney Clark has quit his job of 24 years and is headed for greener pastures.
Clark has worked for Vole for 24 years and took up the role of corporate vice president of global channel sales and channel chief last year.
He is leaving the company to take up a new role as an executive officer at a publicly-traded company that partners with Microsoft.
According to a blog post written by Nick Parker, Microsoft corporate vice president of global partner solutions, the company expects to have a new leader in place by the beginning of its new fiscal year in July.
Software King of the World, Microsoft, is boosting its managed security range by adding three services aimed at operation centres and enterprises.
As part of Microsoft Security Experts the services are called Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR, Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting and Microsoft Security Services for Enterprise.
Microsoft corporate vice president of security compliance, identity and management Vasu Jakkal said the new services were designed with “input from our incredible partner ecosystem”.
“It’s getting harder every day for organisations to build and maintain a full security team, let alone one with the ever-expanding skillset required to meet the range of today’s security demands. With input from our incredible partner ecosystem, we’ve designed three new managed services that can help you scale your team of experts to fit your needs—without the challenges of hiring and training them.”
Tech Data is providing Microsoft cloud partners with a quick-to-deploy version of the Dynamics 365 CRM solution.
Dynamics GO is an “out-of-the-box” version of Dynamics 365 created by specialist provider Dynamiti. The solution can be up and running in as little at 60 minutes, providing customers and partners with accelerated deployment and ROI.
Tech Data Microsoft Dynamics 365 lead Ian Turner said that the package provides a fast and simple way for partners to get their Dynamics 365 business moving.
Microsoft is planning to release a new tool to automate the patch management process, all but eliminating Patch Tuesdays for many companies.
Windows Autopatch will keep business computers continuously updated as part of a new feature included with the Windows Enterprise E3 subscription service.
Organisations running systems with a Windows 10 or Windows 11 Enterprise E3 license will be eligible for the new patch service, which is expected to be generally available in July.
Lior Bela, senior product marketing manager at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. “This service will keep Windows and Office software on enrolled endpoints up-to-date automatically, at no additional cost. IT admins can gain time and resources to drive value. The second Tuesday of every month will be just another Tuesday.”
Software King of the World, Microsoft, seems to be having issues getting its Windows 11 onto computers — with even Windows 7 and XP being on more seats.
Part of the problem is that less than half of business PCs are capable of running the latest Microsoft Windows operating system (OS), according to a Lansweeper audit.
Software King of the World, Microsoft, has announced it is buying process mining technology company Minit.
Vole says it will empower the company to help its customers digitally “transform and drive operational excellence” (which we guess has been parked in a car park on bricks for a while now).
Minit apparently helps businesses gain insights into how processes run, uncover root causes of operational challenges and help mitigate undesired process outcomes.
Founded in 2017, the tech scale-up has offices in Amsterdam, London, Bratislava and New York.
Justin Graham, Microsoft’s general manager of process insights, said: “This acquisition will further empower Microsoft to help our customers digitally transform and drive operational excellence by creating a complete picture of their business processes, enabling every process to be easily and automatically analysed and improved.
EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said that Amazon and Microsoft have not raised cloud competition concerns in the European Union.
Last year, Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounted for 13 percent of Amazon’s revenue but 37 percent of its operating profit ($5.3 billion out of $14.3 billion). At the same time, Microsoft’s Q2’22 (ended 31st December) profit rose to a better-than-expected $18.8 billion, with overall cloud revenue climbing 32 percent and Azure cloud revenue up 46 percent.
These firms’ dominance in the European cloud market has caused concern among smaller competitors. French cloud computing company OVHcloud and German software provider NextCloud filed an antitrust case against Microsoft. They claim the tech giant has been stifling competition in the market and making it harder for consumers to choose services from rival firms.
The complaint focuses on Microsoft’s licensing operations, alleging that the company has made it more expensive for users to switch from Azure to a competing cloud provider.
Microsoft partners down under have started an online petition disapproving of newly announced Microsoft partner programme changes, which they universally declare to be “not fair dinkum”.
The petition dubs the tech giant’s new partner scoring system “impossible to achieve as it’s heavily biased toward ‘new sales.’”
One of the petition organisers told the local press that suppliers were concerned that this is going to continue and it’s going to go down the path of Microsoft wanting to ultimately be that direct relationship with the end-user.
Basically, the fear is that Vole will eventually incentivise customers to work directly with the vendor by sticking partners with higher prices and less favourable contract offers.
Microsoft has scrapped the Microsoft Partner Network as it rebrands to the Microsoft Cloud Partner Programme.
From October 2022, all 400,000 partners in Microsoft’s egosystem will use the Microsoft Cloud Partner Programme instead of the Microsoft Partner Network.
Gone will be the days of Microsoft’s Silver and Gold-level certification badges along with the Microsoft Partner Network name which was first launched over 15 years ago.
Microsoft said that changing the partner programme name was a reflection of “the enormous and ongoing transition of business operations to the cloud” and how it claims to support partners in the future.
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