Microsoft acknowledged hundreds of its highest-performing partners Tuesday with the announcement of the Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. Winners included Alliance Partners Accenture/Avanade for systems integration and Sitecore on the ISV side.
The two categories for individuals went to Geno Cenci of ePlus Technology Inc. for Sales Specialist Partner of the Year, and to Graham Quinn of Auxilion for Pre-Sales Technical Specialist Partner of the Year.
The winners and finalists in 46 categories and the 93 country winners will receive their awards at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), which runs July 13-17 in Washington, D.C. In a statement, Phil Sorgen, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group, said the winners and finalists "represent the best technology professionals our partner ecosystem has to offer" and are "top partners that solve complex business challenges by providing innovative solutions to our mutual customers."
Country award winners in some of the Microsoft Partner Network's most partner-dense geographies included New Signature in the United States, Dot Net Solutions in the United Kingdom, EXAKIS in France, proMX GmbH in Germany, Sonata Information Technology Ltd. in India, Fujitsu Ltd. in Japan, Wortell in the Netherlands, Softjam spa in Italy, Cloud-IT in Canada, TOPS Consulting in Russia, Allen in Brazil, Ensyst in Australia and ODM in Spain.
Of the 46 category awards, several were lumped into larger groupings. Partners winning in the cloud grouping were Caase.com, Ensyst, Cloudamour Ltd. and Object Consulting. For application developers, Dell won in the Windows 8 app category and DocuSign claimed the Office and SharePoint app category. A public sector grouping recognized ITWORX, HP Enterprise Services UK Ltd., Winvision, AvePoint and ICONICS as winners. Top honors for Dynamics went to Edgewater Fullscope for the industry category and Zero2Ten for cloud.
Twenty-six partners won in their Microsoft Competency categories: Infusion, Breeze, nFocus Software Testing, OSIsoft, Webzavod, Orange Business Services, Hitachi Solutions America Ltd., CSK WinTechnology Corp., Wortell, Advance Digital, Tech Data Europe, HSO Group, Triple C Cloud Computing Ltd./Team Netcom Ltd., Oxford Computer Group, CGI IT UK Ltd., Algebra, Convergent Computing, Binary Tree Inc., CompING, Accenture/Avanade, COMPAX, Sensei Project Solutions Inc., CommVault, Bitscape Infotech, Softcat Ltd., Brasoftware.
Citizenship categories included humanitarian response, won by SELA Canada; innovative technology for good citizenship, won by NV Interactive; and YouthSpark, won by Teleios Systems.
Winners and finalists were selected from among 2,800 entries from 117 countries. Click here for the full list of category winners and finalists and country winners.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 27, 20140 comments
Gavriella Schuster, an 18-year Microsoft veteran, will join the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group (WPG) on June 1 in a new position that combines the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) role of Julie Bennani and the partner marketing duties of Karl Noakes, a company spokesperson confirmed Friday.
Phil Sorgen, corporate vice president for the WPG, selected Schuster for the new role in May. Bennani and Noakes continue to report to Sorgen in unspecified roles, including ensuring a smooth transition of their former responsibilities to Schuster, the spokesperson said. The move is designed to gain efficiencies by bringing the MPN and partner marketing teams together, he said.
Schuster's LinkedIn profile describes her as general manager of Worldwide Partner Programs, a new title in the WPG. Her profile describes the role as "Global management of Microsoft's partner recruitment, enablement, marketing and engagement. Responsibilities include Microsoft Partner Network Programs, WPC, Marketing and recruitment programs for ISVs, IP Partners, SIs, and Reselling partners of all types across all Commercial products and customers."
According to her LinkedIn profile, Schuster has been a general manager at Microsoft since 2006 in both the U.S. Server and Tools Business and in the Windows Product Management Group. Her career at Microsoft started in 1995 and has spanned licensing, enterprise services and training. Previous employers included Adobe Systems and Aldus Corp.
Bennani joined Microsoft in 2007 from Accenture, where Microsoft had been one of her major client responsibilities. She started as general manager of the Microsoft Partner Program and was a major architect of the overhaul that resulted in the MPN. Bennani was hired by WPG Corporate Vice President Allison Watson and kept the role through Jon Roskill's tenure as channel chief.
Noakes joined Microsoft in 2006 and held various partner-focused roles in the United Kingdom and at the headquarters in Redmond, Wash., since 2003. Watson promoted him to her be one of her direct reports in July 2009.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 23, 20140 comments
Every year, Microsoft bars employees of about four companies from attending the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC). The list for this year's gathering removes one perennial on the enemies list, Oracle, but adds a new strategic rival, Amazon.
From the WPC "terms and conditions" for the conference this July in Washington, D.C., Microsoft states, "The following companies and their employees and representatives are excluded from attending and participating in WPC 2014 and affiliated events: Amazon, Google, Salesforce.com, VMware."
For the last few years, the list was Google, Oracle, Salesforce.com and VMware. Cisco briefly appeared on the list in 2013, too, but came off, possibly when someone realized that Cisco's server division had been a Gold sponsor of WPC in 2012 and was sponsoring again in 2013.
The list usually provides an advance scorecard for the companies likely to come under fire in Microsoft COO Kevin Turner's annual WPC keynote.
Microsoft's precise reasons for adding or removing a company from the WPC banned list aren't typically shared, but the two changes in the enemies list seemingly stem from changes in the competitive relationships among the companies that began just before WPC in 2013.
Amazon Web Services sales often carry Windows or SQL licensing, making Amazon a partner of Microsoft's. However, Microsoft's IaaS version of Azure came online in April 2013 and has picked up speed since. Meanwhile, Microsoft will be pushing Azure more heavily to partners this year, as evidenced by the Azure direct billing option for partners that kicks in this August.
Oracle's return to favorability follows a major cloud partnership announced just before WPC last year, on June 24, 2013. At that time, the companies announced that all of Oracle's key software offerings would be supported on Microsoft's Windows Server, Hyper-V and Windows Azure products. Oracle is a Silver sponsor of WPC this year.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 23, 20140 comments
There's one week left to get your submissions in for the RCP Rocket Award contest.
Tell us your growth story -- just a one- to two-page description of the innovative business strategies you've used that have resulted in sustained growth over a three-year period.
The 2014 award is open to all U.S.-based IT services companies with annual revenues between $5 million and $75 million. Click here for more contest details or e-mail me with your questions.
For an example of the kind of growth strategies that led to a win in the inaugural contest last year, here's our profile from October 2013 of one of the three winners:
2013 RCP Rocket Award Winner Profile: Axis Group
Albert Hughes felt a little skittish when SAP AG announced it was buying Business Objects in 2007.
Axis Group LLC, which Hughes had founded 11 years earlier, was a heavy Business Objects partner. The signals Hughes was receiving as the deal steamed toward completion in early 2008 made him wonder if partner companies like his might be less important to SAP than they had been to Business Objects.
The situation wasn't critical because Axis Group used a broad portfolio of business intelligence vendors and could make up for any drops in Business Objects-related work with other projects. But it definitely got Hughes, the principal, CEO and CTO of Axis Group, looking around. "We've typically had a vendor that was a lead one," Hughes said in an interview at the Axis Group headquarters in Berkeley Heights, N.J.
Starting to disengage from SAP/Business Objects turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Axis Group, because it started a process of weaning the business intelligence solution provider off almost all but one vendor solution. That focus, in turn, helped catapult Axis Group to growth.
RCP Editor in Chief Scott Bekker (right) presents an RCP Rocket Award to Axis Group principals Al Hughes (left) and Ranjan Sinha (center). Axis Group focused tightly on one business intelligence vendor and a small number of verticals to maximize business growth.
Hughes and others at Axis Group had been keeping an eye on QlikView, a product that combined extract, transform, load (ETL), data warehousing and a visual-analytic front-end. A few years earlier, the product seemed promising but unready for Axis Group's customers. As the SAP situation developed, Hughes and company took another look.
"We were pretty amazed at what it could do. Applying the technical capabilities and the business acumen of our people, we could [build solutions] in a very fast fashion," said Hughes. "We decided to start focusing on that."
By then, the economic downturn was upon the industry, and it further spurred Axis Group to simplify, said Hughes' fellow principal Ranjan Sinha, who has responsibility for strategy, product development, sales and marketing.
"This was our first time that we said everybody's going to have to go through the same boot camp for QlikView; everybody's going to have to know the same thing," Sinha said. "We actually eliminated other technologies. It was the first time in our careers we actually said, "No, we don't want to be your partner anymore.' We got rid of the contract [for other vendors]."
At the same time, Axis Group also focused its sales efforts into specific verticals rather than selling to any company with business intelligence needs. It was another way of being more targeted and less opportunistic. The company currently offers solutions for health care; manufacturing, retail, distribution (MRD); energy and utilities; and financial services. Having the vertical focus helps the company build repeatable (and therefore more efficient) sales and implementation processes.
The strategy has helped Axis Group more than double its revenues over the last three years while substantially increasing profits. Focus also brought Axis Group into a much more productive relationship on QlikView than it enjoyed with previous vendor partners. Axis Group earned the 2012 "Solution Provider of the Year" award from the product's parent company, QlikTech International AB.
Hughes sees a virtuous circle in the multi-year focus of Axis Group on one vendor's solution. "An important thing the focus brings is expertise. Everybody in the organization has to have expertise in that core component. We have ancillary technology for the complete solutions, but everything that we focus on is really three things -- the people, the process and the technology," Hughes said, adding with a chuckle: "It's a combination of good technology and good implementation and you can get really rocket-type results."
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 23, 20140 comments
Starting this summer, partners will be able to resell Microsoft's Azure cloud services to customers in a way that still allows partners to control their own margins while adjusting for monthly changes in demand.
"Microsoft Azure will be available for partners to resell in the Open Licensing programs on Aug. 1 of this year," said Phil Sorgen, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group, in a video message Wednesday.
For as long as Microsoft has offered cloud services, many partners have lobbied for the ability to bill their customers directly, rather than selling the customer on the service and having them turn to Microsoft to order and renew them. After several years, Microsoft relented and made Office 365 available to partners to resell through the Microsoft Open Licensing program in the spring of 2013. In April of this year, Microsoft added Open Licensing as an option for the Windows Intune and Power BI for Office 365 cloud services.
Microsoft channel chief Phil Sorgen discusses the Microsoft Azure opportunity during a video message announcing that direct billing is coming for partners reselling the cloud service.
"Open allows you to purchase a Microsoft product or service from your preferred distributor and resell it to your customer. You control the direct relationship," Sorgen said.
With those other cloud services, partners can buy seats on behalf of customers, then bill the customers themselves. Azure's infrastructure-on-demand model requires a different approach. Microsoft's response is a token-based process, where partners buy Azure services in $100 increments and add those tokens of credit to the customer's Azure Portal.
"The credits can be used for any consumption-based service available in Azure," wrote Josh Waldo, Microsoft senior director of Cloud Partner Strategy, in a blog post. "This gives you the opportunity to manage your customer's portal, set up services and monitor consumption, all while maintaining a direct relationship."
The Open Licensing option adds to the previous options of purchasing Microsoft Azure directly on azure.microsoft.com or as part of an Enterprise Agreement.
The token approach with Azure skirts one of the thorniest remaining issues for Microsoft partners in reselling cloud services. Part of the appeal for customers of any cloud service is the ability to pay out of operational expenses on a monthly basis. However, Microsoft initially only made Office 365, Windows Intune and other services available through Open as a service that can be purchased with an upfront payment for the entire year.
That gap between customer expectation and Microsoft Licensing reality makes the initial sale harder or leaves the partner with the cash flow issue of buying the subscription up front but only receiving customer payments over the course of the year.
The ability with Azure to buy in $100 increments should give partners the ability to bill monthly in a way that adjusts for seasonal spikes and troughs in demand.
Expect to hear a lot more about Open Licensing for Microsoft Azure at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in July. Ahead of that, Microsoft also plans a virtual summit covering Open Licensing for Azure on June 4.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 21, 20140 comments
A year after launching an Office 365 migration project automation tool for Microsoft partners, SkyKick this week released an enterprise version to help the channel move larger customers to Microsoft's cloud productivity suite.
The two-time Microsoft Partner of the Year Award-winning startup, launched by former Microsoft employees, released its SkyKick Application Suite in April 2013 with the idea of automating most of the tasks involved in migrating smaller customers from on-premises or other cloud e-mail systems onto Office 365. The original product design focused on the SMB customers that represent the sweet spot of Office 365 adoption, with SkyKick's business case scenarios centering on deployments with about 25 users.
During a year of use, however, co-CEOs Evan Richman and Todd Schwartz say SkyKick partners who move larger organizations to Microsoft's cloud provided feedback about some of the specialized requirements for those larger projects.
On Tuesday, SkyKick unveiled an Enterprise Migration Suite to meet some of those needs. In spite of the enterprise name, Richman and Schwartz say SkyKick remains committed to 100 percent channel sales of its suite. The name strictly refers to the user counts the suite is designed to support, which is in the range of 250 to 10,000 users.
We spoke with one partner who was an early adopter of the SkyKick Application Suite and beta tested the Enterprise Migration Suite. Chris Hertz, CEO of New Signature in Washington, D.C., used SkyKick for SMB customers but wasn't able to make the suite work for larger customers.
In an interview, Hertz detailed three things New Signature is now able to do with the SkyKick Enterprise Migration Suite:
1. Skip some hybrid infrastructures. To move an enterprise organization to Exchange Online, New Signature and many other partners commonly set up temporary hybrid Exchange environments. In those cases, the hybrid server is built as a bridge that helps maintain user information like free/busy calendar data and acts as a staging area for the three months to a year that larger organizations typically take to move completely from the old environment to the new.
"SkyKick is really a tool that allows you to do a cutover migration or a staged migration without doing a hybrid server," Hertz said. The SkyKick tool won't be able to replace the need for a hybrid environment in every case, but it will eliminate many of them, Hertz said. He contended that's the new tool's biggest value.
"If you thought about the complexity of an Exchange Online migration, the hybrid is one of the more complex pieces," he said, and added that it will reduce one of the biggest obstacles to Office 365 sales in midsize to enterprise organizations. "There are some instances where we walk into a customer and they say, 'I can't go through the hybrid environment that you're describing.'"
2. Improve migration planning. The original SkyKick toolset involved migration planning, but the new enterprise version offers much more detailed information gathering and more options, as befits larger environments. "For midmarket customers, it's super important to do planning," Hertz said. "The SkyKick tools can provide some intelligence around that."
Planning tools in the new SkyKick Enterprise Migration Suite include support for pilot deployments, mailbox and source information discovery, and e-mail architecture planning. A fair amount of planning information also emerges earlier in the "Sell" phase of SkyKick's end-to-end migration process for partners.
New elements of the enterprise tool include the ability to log in to a Microsoft Licensing account to assign Open or Enterprise Agreement licenses to Office 365 users, the ability to pull data from multiple Exchange servers in the case of an acquisition, and the ability to normalize e-mail addresses (for example, change all e-mail addresses in a company to first initial, last name during the migration).
3. Training is baked in. The white-labeled SkyKick e-mails at various stages of the process provide instructions for users on setting up accounts and using their new Office 365 functionality. "A lot of midmarket customers don't necessarily have a large training function," Hertz said. The canned e-mail messages from SkyKick do a good job of helping users along, he said. For a partner, Hertz noted, showing 30 users in one office how to use a new system is possible, but trying to teach the system to 1,000 users in five offices and two countries is very difficult.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 20, 20140 comments
Microsoft will hold a press event in New York City on Tuesday for a Surface announcement that is rumored to include the unveiling of a "Surface Mini" and a new Intel-based Surface Pro.
The limited-seating event begins at 11 a.m. Eastern Time, and those who want to follow along will be able to join a live webcast at the Microsoft News Center.
Microsoft's News Center preview shows an image of impassioned Surface advocate Panos Panay, who demonstrated the Surface features when former top Windows executive Steven Sinofsky rolled out the first Surface, and who also presided over the Surface 2 launches last year after Sinofsky's departure. At that second event, Panay said he had plans for several generations of future Surface releases.
Rumor has it, in the form of a Mary Jo Foley report, that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will be on hand to unveil the Surface news Tuesday. Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer never actively took part in a Surface launch. For the initial Surface, Ballmer was in the venue for the formal launch earlier in the day of Windows 8, but Ballmer left the Surface duties to Sinofsky.
How big a deal is this launch? Pre-launch reports are calling for Microsoft to launch a 7- to 8-inch "Surface Mini" with a digital pen and a chipset switch from Nvidia Corp. to Qualcomm Inc. and a new Surface Pro based on new Intel chips.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 19, 20140 comments
Microsoft this week released a Lync app that supports Android tablets, closing the one large remaining hole in the unified communications platform's mobile device coverage.
Lync apps were already available for Android phones, as well as for iPads, iPhones, Windows 8.1 devices and Windows Phones.
The new app works for both Android tablets and Android phones. The mid-May delivery beats Microsoft's self-imposed deadline of late June. Microsoft Corporate Vice President Derek Burney floated that late June deadline while demonstrating a pre-release version of the Android app on stage at Microsoft's Lync Conference in February.
Because the Android app now combines phone and tablet form factors, Microsoft added the ability to adjust icon sizes, as well as image and video settings. Two new features for all Android users in the app are the ability to start ad hoc group conversations and to add participants to ongoing conversations.
The Lync app requires Android 4.0 or later, a 1.2GHz dual core or higher processor and at least a VGA camera.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 15, 20140 comments
Kaseya on Thursday rolled out a major update to its partner program.
The midmarket-focused systems management company counts managed service providers as a major part of its customer base, but the enhancements to the Kaseya Partner Program apply to a different group of partners.
Affected partners include authorized resellers, authorized distributors, implementation partners, education partners, referral partners and technology alliance partners.
Roger Hodskins, head of global channels and alliances at Kaseya for the last four months, said in an interview that about 150 of Kaseya's 300 worldwide partners in those categories have been piloting the new program.
Resources of the program include tiered rewards and incentives, sales training, marketing materials, technical documentation and API integration for Web programming and access. A new Partner Portal also delivers deal registration, lead management capabilities and community discussion groups. Partners will also get access to tools for on-boarding new customers, provisioning end-users, offering demos, proof-of-concept assistance, pipeline management and forecasting.
Hodskins says Kaseya has doubled the number of worldwide employees working with this group of channel partners. While Kaseya is looking to increase its number of partners, the focus will be more on quality than quantity, he said.
"As we brought on new partners just in the last several months, we're really getting people coming to us who are looking to add value as Kaseya's offerings move to the cloud. We're getting people joining us who are familiar with the cloud, familiar with adding value to cloud-based applications," Hodskins said.
The cloud focus fits with a rebranding of Kaseya as the "IT Management Cloud Company" at Kaseya Connect last month.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 08, 20140 comments
At its Vision conference this week, Symantec unveiled updates to the Symantec Partner Program, including more than a dozen new solution competencies and incentives tied to those competencies.
The changes deliver on a previously announced overhaul to the Symantec Partner Program, which focuses on a two-tier competency structure -- a lower-level Principal Competency and a higher-level Expert Competency. The competencies will replace the solution specializations Symantec previously had in place.
"These new Competencies give partners the choice to deepen their expertise in a particular solution area, or to extend their capabilities across multiple solutions for broader market traction. By achieving a Symantec Competency, partners demonstrate their insight, experience and solutions-expertise -- crucial when solving their customers' unique business challenges," wrote John Eldh, vice president of channel and commercial sales for Symantec, in a blog post.
Competency availability will vary by region, but the initial set of 14 includes Archiving, Cloud Services, Data Security, Dynamic Storage and Continuity, eDiscovery, Endpoint Management, Endpoint Security, Enterprise Backup and Recovery, Gateway Security, Managed Services, Mid-Market Backup and Recovery, Mobility, Security Monitoring and Management, and Web Site Security Solutions.
Starting in October, achieving a competency will open access to financial benefits, such as:
- Opportunity registration with up to a 20 percent earnings increase for Principal or Expert Competency partners;
- Growth Accelerator rebate of up to 8 percent for Expert Competency partners hitting new business revenue targets;
- Renewals Performance Incentive for Expert Competency partners meeting renewal opportunity targets; and
- Development funds for certain Expert Competency partners.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 07, 20140 comments
Continuum CEO Michael George is offering a full-throated argument for the channel in the cloud era.
George posted a video message this week on the Continuum Web site to promote its new Continuum Cloud Console, or C3, service for managing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) on behalf of customers (see previous RCP coverage here).
Here's how George started:
The cloud poses a wildly disruptive dimension to the traditional IT services industry. Cloud providers are pitching directly to the enterprise, negating the channel. Many are touting the channel as irrelevant, and some are even predicting its demise.
Continuum sees the new cloud economy very differently. Continuum loves the channel, supports the channel and believes MSPs will be even more relevant in this new economy.
Certain services simply cannot afford to rely on distant relationships, not when dealing with the crucial core data of your business. To take a phrase from former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, who said, "All politics are local," well, Continuum says, "All IT is local." Therefore, Continuum sees a big place for IT service providers in the new cloud economy.
It's a great counter message to the idea that the channel can't co-exist long term with mega cloud providers. (The only improvement I'd suggest is having George stride through a modern house and end up unplugging a hybrid Cadillac). Yes, the channel has to change to survive, but when has that not been true?
Check out the video here.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 07, 20140 comments
In last month's issue of Redmond Channel Partner magazine, we looked at the interesting times ahead for the Microsoft Board of Directors.
The upshot was that while Bill Gates kept a firm grip on control of the company for decades, his relinquishment of the chairman's role and the addition of some strong personalities to the board could lead to a rocky future.
One of the data points was Gates' diminishing ownership in the company as he sells off shares to fund his charitable efforts.
It turns out that this month marks a major milestone in Microsoft history. As of an SEC filing on May 2, Gates has sold off so many shares that he is no longer Microsoft's largest individual shareholder. That title now goes to former CEO Steve Ballmer.
According to Todd Bishop at Geekwire, who first wrote about the SEC filing, Gates' sale of 4.6 million shares on April 30 brought him to 330.1 million shares, while Ballmer holds more than 333 million.
At his peak of percentage control, Gates arranged a 64-36 split of the company with co-founder Paul Allen. When Microsoft went public in 1986, Gates owned 49 percent of the company. Gates is on a course to have no financial stake in Microsoft by 2018.
Previous RCP coverage here and here.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 05, 20140 comments