The emerging opportunity for partners to help their customers tap into the Internet of Things (IoT) was recently confirmed by Microsoft's addition of the Intelligent Systems competency.
The cloud play for IoT -- providing a secure place for all the data to live -- is an obvious partner opportunity, but the service opportunities are where it gets really interesting. As always, there are partners who are leading the way to help solve business problems and take advantage of the latest technology.
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Posted by Barb Levisay on May 21, 20140 comments
In January, Microsoft announced that there would be no further releases of InfoPath, with the current release supported through April 2023. As with every end-of-life announcement, customers and partners alike have to deal with the realities of product transitions.
A recent blog post entitled "Keep Calm and InfoPath On," authored by Jonathan Ralton, senior information architect at BlueMetal, clears up misconceptions and offers practical advice for partners to build an effective InfoPath strategy for their clients. I touched base with Ralton and Bob German, BlueMetal's principal architect, to talk about the options that partners have to help clients adapt to the eventual retirement of InfoPath.
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Posted by Barb Levisay on May 07, 20140 comments
If you still haven't joined International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP), its latest program offers value that you may not be able to pass up.
To help partners provide certification training for their consultants without interrupting billable time, IAMCP is offering after-hours training classes at highly discounted rates.
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Posted by Barb Levisay on April 23, 20140 comments
Even with the customers you know well, sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. By stepping back to look at the forest -- the whole of your customer base -- you'll gain insights to help guide your firm's growth. Through an analysis of your current customer base, you'll undoubtedly identify specific opportunities, but you may also uncover vertical or service-line service potential that you hadn't noticed.
Collect the Data for Your Customer Base
This is where the time commitment comes in, but the exercise can be well worth the investment. Complete the data sets for your customers as much as possible to provide meaningful depth to your analysis. Steps should include:
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Posted by Barb Levisay on April 09, 20140 comments
When Tony DiBenedetto, CEO of Tribridge, a Microsoft National System Integrator (NSI), threw out the challenge in an Inc.com article earlier this year, he wasn't sure what kind of response he would get. Apparently, he hit a nerve.
In the article, DiBenedetto challenged business, government and educational groups to work together to take on the skills gap -- to develop qualified candidates for tech jobs. After adding 200 people to Tribridge in 2013 and expecting similar expansion this year, DiBenedetto said it's not business growth that worries him.
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Posted by Barb Levisay on March 26, 20140 comments
The cadence of version releases isn't the only thing that is accelerating for Microsoft Dynamics partners.
Last week at Convergence, the annual conference for Dynamics partners and customers, the need for speedier implementation times for the ERP and CRM solutions was a common theme. To support those faster deployments, Microsoft is developing configuration, implementation and testing tools for Dynamics CRM and Dynamics AX.
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Posted by Barb Levisay on March 12, 20140 comments
With this month's release of Power BI for Office 365, cloud-based business analytics without an expensive barrier to entry is now available to your customers. Providing access to self-service data analytics directly through Excel, Power BI for Office 365 levels the playing field of business intelligence for the SMB market. Smart partners are seizing the opportunity to give those businesses a hand.
BI for SMB
Since the announcement of Power BI for Office 365 at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference last year, forward-thinking partners have been using the preview version to understand the value to customers. Mike Gilronan, SharePoint practice director for the Northeast region at McGladrey LLP, has already been showing clients the potential of the new service.
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Posted by Barb Levisay on February 20, 20140 comments
Packaging services is certainly not a new concept, but it is an idea whose time has come.
Your customers are looking at IT outsourcing from a new perspective. Hardware is no longer a barrier between them and solving their business problems. Technology projects don't seem quite so daunting to take on. Customers want simple-to-purchase, simple-to-execute solutions.
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Posted by Barb Levisay on February 05, 20140 comments
No product elicits the enthusiasm for training and professional development like SharePoint. People willingly give up family time on Saturdays to share their knowledge of Microsoft's collaboration platform.
Perhaps the most ambitious undertaking yet, the SP24 conference will be held April 16, when SharePoint professionals will gather on a global scale. More
Posted by Barb Levisay on January 23, 20140 comments
Many traditional managed service providers (MSPs) are still finding their place in the cloud, but others have made significant progress. As the cloud becomes mainstream, how are regional MSPs faring?
One regional MSP serving the Carolinas and Georgia, VC3 Inc., was an early adopter of the cloud. "I believe we are ahead of the curve in the cloud managed services business," said David Dunn, CEO of VC3. "Last January, we crossed the line of 50 percent of managed services revenues coming through our private cloud offering, and we're pushing 60 percent now."
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Posted by Barb Levisay on January 09, 20140 comments
In a recent blog post, longtime Microsoft channel partner Mike Gilronan describes five distinct phases of the Microsoft partnering experience. Gilronan's slightly tongue-in-cheek analysis, loosely based on the Kübler-Ross 5 Stages of Grief model, provides some useful insights into what both new and established partners should expect from their Microsoft association.
Below is a highly abbreviated summary of Gilronan's stages:
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Posted by Barb Levisay on December 11, 20130 comments
It's hard to imagine that just a few years ago, the cloud was a new concept to most and a perceived threat to much of the channel.
While we are still in the formative years of cloud computing, there are trends emerging. The cloud is not a panacea -- the NSA has done a good job of reminding us of that -- but customers are defining how it can help their businesses.
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Posted by Barb Levisay on November 19, 20130 comments