How to Build a Successful Cloud Practice
Tim Tetrick
As part of the strategy to help our partners create and accelerate their efforts to develop profitable and successful cloud practices, I wanted to highlight the following Cloud Practice Development Playbooks focused on:
- Cloud Infrastructure & Management Playbook
- Cloud Application Development Playbook
- Data Platform & Analytics Playbook
- Mobility & Security Playbook
Microsoft conducted two research studies to better understand how top-performing partners have developed successful and profitable cloud practices. The outcome of this extensive research is four new Cloud Practice Development Playbooks that provide clear, practical, and targeted guidance to help enable our partners to create, grow, and optimize their cloud practices in a sustainable and profitable way.
Each playbook contains insight from the research studies, business oriented best practices and case studies from top-performing partners, and an overview of additional resources partners can leverage across the practice development process.
The playbooks are meant for partners who are building new or developing existing practices and are appropriate for all roles that support the development of a practice including leadership, sales, marketing, support, and your technical teams.
To understand best practices for developing cloud practices, from both a business and technical perspective, we held in-depth interviews with 50 partners with established cloud practices for the first study. For the second study, we conducted a comprehensive survey of 1,100 Microsoft Azure partners with active cloud practices worldwide to gather insights on a range of topics including what services each practice offered, hiring, compensation, and training practices. We also gathered information on what skillsets they have in place to support their offers, as well as the time it took them to become profitable.
These playbooks add to the body of work released last year, including the Azure Managed Services Playbook for Partners in the CSP program and the Modern Partner ebook series launched with IDC, from which partners have seen tangible and valuable impact on their respective businesses.
I hope you find these new playbooks to be useful in defining and optimizing your cloud business!