I seldom write about IT or cybersecurity, but today I decided to make an exception.
There have been several publicly known ransomware attacks recently. The attacks against Colonial Pipeline and SolarWinds were eye-opening to many. The attack against Kaseya affected, according to the vendor, 1,500 organizations worldwide. The villains found a clever way to extend their reach by attacking vendors that provide tools for MSPs. Even my local golf club got hit in the Kaseya attack.
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Posted by Per Werngren on September 02, 20210 comments
We have all had a very different past year. We have all suffered and made sacrifices, and many of us have lost people close to us.
Yet our partner ecosystem has been highly innovative, and there has been a strong demand for digital transformation, which has benefited many of us. More
Posted by Per Werngren on June 02, 20210 comments
As a former president of the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP), I had the privilege and honor of leading the team that took the IAMCP from four to 44 countries and reached an annual revenue of $10 billion in deals between our members. That experience gave me some visibility into what makes partner-to-partner (P2P) relationships and engagements successful.
Today's Microsoft ecosystem is highly vibrant. We see great innovation happening across the globe, which opens new opportunities. As our customers are increasingly global, we need to address how to sell and deliver to them beyond geographical borders. More
Posted by Per Werngren on December 21, 20200 comments
Remember when your customers had offices filled with workers and everyone had a PC on their desks? Remember when people met in person and the computer room in the basement hosted all the servers?
Most systems integrators (SIs) and value-added resellers (VARs) had a viable business with support staff onsite taking care of people and systems. Most SIs and VARs did a blended delivery, where only some of the support was delivered from a central service desk. Their livelihood was to sell hours in different packages. The Microsoft Office experience was delivered through local Exchange and SharePoint servers -- though, of course, many customers had made the switch to Microsoft 365. More
Posted by Per Werngren on November 05, 20200 comments
In Part 1 of this series, I covered the way the CIO job has changed and how partners can best help CIOs succeed in delivering on business objectives rather than just on technology objectives.
Now that you know the big picture, here are some thoughts for low-hanging fruit: More
Posted by Per Werngren on September 22, 20200 comments
Despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, we still need to be there for our customers and give them strategic advice. And perhaps this is more important now than ever.
If I were a Microsoft partner working as a strategic advisor to CIOs, here is what I would like to talk to them about. More
Posted by Per Werngren on September 15, 20200 comments
Getting employees working from home or at least in widely separated sections of the office, leveraging Microsoft Teams and watching your cash flow like a hawk are among the key measures to weather this pandemic, says channel community leader Per Werngren.
With the coronavirus affecting us all, both in our professional and our personal lives, it is important for Microsoft partners to take proper action in order to not fall victim to this crisis.
We need to take care of each other: our employees, our customers and our fellow partners. We compete every other day with each other, but right now is the time to be generous and help those in need. Don't try to make the coronavirus an opportunity to steal business from each other -- we're better than that and united we stand as a community. More
Posted by Per Werngren on March 17, 20200 comments
As we're well into the first quarter of 2020, I see four big trend-related opportunities for Microsoft partners this year.
Having been around this ecosystem for quite some time, I'm noticing that we are finally seeing great progress in embracing diversity. More
Posted by Per Werngren on February 20, 20200 comments
Thank you for all the great feedback and wonderful discussions on my previous guest blog about the concept of the virtual hoster. I understand that this resonates well with both legacy hosters, as well as newcomers who want to enter this market.
As Microsoft prepares mechanisms and processes to incentivize partners who manage resources -- instead of only those who just handle the transactions -- we see that this will further boost interest from partners to be in this space.
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Posted by Per Werngren on November 18, 20190 comments
As the CEO of Interlink Cloud Advisors in the Cincinnati area, Matt Scherocman has been selling cloud for a long time. Having launched the born-in-the-cloud startup after observing the opportunity from inside Microsoft, Scherocman has navigated a lot of change in how Microsoft offers cloud services. In this guest post, Matt shares his secrets for selling to customers under Microsoft's Cloud Solution Provider model and for competing with Enterprise Agreement inertia.
Interlink has seen it all when it comes to selling Microsoft's Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) licensing program. We have had tremendous success over the last eight years of our business, but we also know the tremendous frustration it can bring. Licensing itself is constantly changing, and it can be confusing and complicated.
Microsoft and other partners often ask us what has made us successful and how we overcome challenges. Here are some pointers: More
Posted by Matt Scherocman on October 17, 20190 comments
Being a hoster has been a phenomenal business model for many years. The concept was easy: You built a datacenter in your own building or rented colocation space elsewhere, and then you bought hardware and expanded as needed. It was a simple way to earn good money when you did it right with a structured, industrial approach.
For many years, I ran my own hosting company and it was the best of times. But times are changing! With the adoption of megascale cloud computing provided by Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google, many local hosters are becoming obsolete and losing their customers. Some local hosters will still make a decent living for years to come, but they might benefit from special requirements in a certain vertical or geography. More
Posted by Per Werngren on September 17, 20190 comments
Over the years, it has been very lucrative for partners to look at where Microsoft is making investments and to make sure that their bets are aligned with Microsoft's.
The level of investment from Microsoft that goes into engineering, readiness, marketing and sales means that partners who make sure to align their businesses with those priorities have a lot of wind at their backs. More
Posted by Per Werngren on August 12, 20190 comments