Microsoft WPC: The cloud delivers new markets, customers and responsibilities

Additional revenue sources as well as challenges were highlighted in early keynotes and sessions. Divina Paredes reports from Washington DC

By Divina Paredes, Washington DC | Wednesday, 14 July 2010
Microsoft partners from across the globe share pointers on how they succeeded in the transition to the cloud. One CEO says they have changed their brand into a cloud provider. They developed an inside sales force, changed the sales model to capture all cloud based opportunities and have references that were able to win larger customers.
Another company has a dedicated team of pre-sales engineers and targeted a list of 100 customers. They have since won over five BPOS deals, one of which has 6000 seats, a church. One company CEO said they have changed their brand into a cloud provider, we developed an inside sales force, changed sales model to capture all cloud based opportunities building market muscle built a virtual sales and delivery model, and were able to win larger customers with their reference companies.
Tiffani Bova, vice president, Research Indirect Channel Programs and Sales Strategies, at analyst firm Gartner, says the worldwide market for cloud services was worth 58.6 billion in 2009. She predicts this figure to rise to $148 billion in 2014.
She points out SMBs are now more willing to consider cloud services than they were 18 months ago. Small businesses with legacy or consumer based IT will use cloud to upgrade their infrastructure, she says.
She suggests some steps where channel partners can focus their time and energy.
For now, she says, they need to experiment with the cloud and discover where it fits into their current offerings. She suggests getting a focus group of customers and asking them what their intentions are in the cloud, and their concerns. In the next 90 days, she recommends figuring out how the company is “gonna play in that sandbox”. She asks, as you build your portfolio, do you have the right sales people and engineers?
In the next 12 months, she says, channel partners need to develop a strategy on how to build a dynamic and flexible organisation.
Microsoft says this year’s event is the biggest worldwide partner conference so far, with 95090 partners and 3000 Microsoft employees from 130 countries attending. There are around 74 delegates from New Zealand, the largest so far.
Two New Zealand companies, meanwhile, are honoured at the conference - Express Data as Distributor of the Year awardee and Intergen as inaugural Country Partner of the Year for New Zealand. Express Data sales and marketing manager Paul Plester unfurled a New Zealand flag as he went up the stage to receive the prize.