Microsoft Build 2018, the company's flagship developer conference, packed a lot of news into a few days. With dozens of announcements, including 70 new capabilities in Azure and more than 100 new features for the Bot Framework, it's impossible to capture even all of the important ones from the Seattle event.
What follows are 12 key takeaways from the three main keynotes last week that highlight important trends and opportunities for Microsoft partners. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 14, 20180 comments
Microsoft released a new offering through its Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program on Thursday that could help partners create more cost-effective Microsoft Azure solutions for customers willing to pay upfront.
Azure was already available through CSP, which is Microsoft's program allowing partners to resell cloud services and other Microsoft products to customers on a subscription basis. The bulk of Microsoft and partner business in CSP is in Office 365, but Microsoft has been steadily adding other products and services to the mix.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on May 10, 20180 comments
There's the current Microsoft Graph, the older Office Graph, the LinkedIn Graph and other graphs.
"Graph" is one of those terms that Microsoft has been throwing around for a few years now, but telling one graph from another has never been straightforward.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on May 08, 20180 comments
An Azure co-sell program launched last July to incentivize Microsoft field sellers to promote partner solutions with customers has generated $2.3 billion in partner revenues so far, a Microsoft executive said.
"This program continues to grow beyond expectation, delivering over $2.3 billion in partner revenue to date," said Charlotte Yarkoni, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Growth and Ecosystem, on Monday during the main keynote for Microsoft Build 2018 in Seattle. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 08, 20180 comments
Cortana and Alexa shared the stage on Monday during the Build 2018 keynote, five months after their respective proprietors announced a joint plan to integrate the two.
Alexa (Amazon's assistant whose main platform is Echo devices) and Cortana (Microsoft's intelligent assistant that operates primarily from Windows 10) were featured calling upon one another's services during the keynote. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 07, 20180 comments
Microsoft's defunct foray into motion-based gaming technology is back for the "intelligent edge" era.
At his Build 2018 keynote on Monday, CEO Satya Nadella unveiled a fourth-generation version of Microsoft's discontinued Kinect motion-sensing device, which the company is repurposing with more advanced technologies for artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), Azure and edge computing. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 07, 20180 comments
Kaseya, a vendor of managed service provider (MSP) and midmarket enterprise tools, merged with backup specialist Unitrends on Thursday.
Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but both companies are part of the Insight Venture Partners portfolio. Insight made what it described as a "significant investment" in Kaseya in June 2013 and a "major growth equity investment" in Unitrends in October 2013. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 03, 20180 comments
Just a year after launching Cosmos DB as an Azure service at the 2017 Build developer conference, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says it's the fastest-scaling database he's ever seen.
"In less than a year, Azure Cosmos DB, the first globally distributed [and] multi-model database, exceeded $100 million in annualized revenue," said the Microsoft CEO during the company's Q3 earnings call last week. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on April 30, 20180 comments
Microsoft reported surprisingly strong Windows and Surface revenues in a largely flat-to-declining PC market, but the company's third-quarter financial results seemed mainly powered by continuing cloud strength.
Microsoft reported overall earnings of $0.95 per share on revenues of $26.82 billion. The third-quarter (January through March) figures beat analyst expectations of $0.85 per share and revenues of $25.77 billion, but the company's stock still fell in after-hours trading following the news. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on April 26, 20180 comments
For about five years, Microsoft has been encouraging partners to develop their own intellectual property. Reston, Va.-based IOTAP took that advice to heart in a way that's already helping other partners struggling to overcome some of the difficulties inherent in being a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP).
As a CSP itself, IOTAP had difficulty tracking licensing for CSP customers. Straightforward orders went fine. Things got complicated when customers wanted to add seats, change Office 365 or other Microsoft cloud product SKUs, or otherwise change orders during the middle of a billing period, to name a few of the many examples. When a customer wanted to know why their charges came in at a certain amount, it could be hard to find an answer.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on April 20, 20180 comments
Microsoft's ongoing courtship of Linux reached a new milestone this week when the company unveiled a brand-new operating system product with a Linux kernel.
The product is Azure Sphere OS, and it's part of Microsoft's ambitious effort to place itself at the center of the emerging swarm of Internet of Things (IoT) with Azure Sphere, a combination of a reference architecture for microcontroller units (MCUs), operating systems for the devices themselves, and a cloud-based Azure Sphere Security Service to manage and secure them all. The broader Azure Sphere initiative is expected to result in shipping products by the end of the year. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on April 17, 20180 comments
Fresh from announcing a plan to invest $5 billion in Internet of Things (IoT) initiatives over the next four years, Microsoft this week took its IoT push even further with the launch of a major new security vision.
Brad Smith, Microsoft president and chief legal officer, unveiled Azure Sphere on Monday during a security news briefing in San Francisco timed to coincide with the start of the 2018 RSA Conference. Azure Sphere aims to secure the billions of IoT devices, from device hardware to software to cloud -- and gives Microsoft a central role. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on April 17, 20180 comments