How Microsoft Sees Partners' Roles in the Cloud

Microsoft is arguably the house that the channel built. Yet, with the shift to the cloud, many channel partners have been left behind. At the Microsoft Worldwide Partners Conference (WPC), the company sought to rectify that with a slew of new Azure and Office 365 offerings and programs designed to reward partners more for adding value on top of Microsoft cloud platforms and services. With 90 percent of the tech giant's revenue coming via the channel, motivating those partners to sell cloud services is critical to Microsoft's efforts to combat rivals, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS). The challenge Microsoft faces it that only a small percentage of its partners have a business model in place that is based primarily on cloud services. The rest are in some state of transition. That's not necessarily a bad thing from Microsoft's perspective. Hybrid cloud solutions that span on-premise and Azure deployments substantially differentiate Microsoft from AWS. In the meantime, solution providers would be well advised to tap into a rapidly expanding array of Microsoft cloud services that are continuously being optimized for the channel.