New Microsoft Cloud Club Doubles BPOS Margins for Top U.S. Partners
U.S. partners who sell Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite to at least 20 customers for a total of 500 seats or more will be eligible to double their initial margins under a new arrangement called the Cloud Champions Club.
Microsoft held a webcast for partners on Friday about the club and has another webcast scheduled Oct. 1. The club consists of three tiers with benefits increasing as partners advance from one level to the next. Benefits include specialized cloud training, monthly webcasts, marketing support, qualified leads and an online services partner development manager.
The entry level for the club is three customer wins for a minimum of 75 seats. Tier 2 is eight sales and 200 seats. Reaching the 20-sale, 500-seat third tier triggers the doubling of the finder's fee margin for BPOS to 24 percent. But reaching the first tier brings personal attention from a Microsoft partner development manager; and market development funds and per-deal subsidies kick off with the second tier. See our news story on BPOS margins and the Cloud Champions Club for a lot more detail.
Oh, and one point of clarification -- this is different from Microsoft's Cloud Accelerate. The Cloud Champions Club is a U.S. subsidiary intiative. Cloud Accelerate comes through the separate Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group and has different requirements and benefits, and – as far as we've heard – standard 12 percent BPOS margins.
Posted by Scott Bekker on September 20, 2010