Embracing the opportunity with Windows Server 2003 End of Support
You may have seen a number of cloud growth stats from trusted analysts like IDC, Gartner & Forrester, all indicating that Canadian customers are adopting cloud computing to become more agile and responsive, while shifting their IT spend to operating expense models. This presents a huge opportunity for partners while also changing the traditional sales models of IT. So many of our Canadian partners are at an inflection point today. Do I continue to push on-premises solutions, including selling physical servers and other hardware (because I make some great margins upfront) or do I move to the cloud and possibly reduce my upfront margins but get in it for the long run? The fact of the matter is the cloud is here and it's going to stay.
According to a recent Avanade study, “Half of Canadian respondents said they planned to move to a hybrid cloud platform combining public and private clouds, while 21 per cent were looking exclusively at the private cloud and four per cent solely the public cloud.” So many of our Canadian partners are at an inflection point today. Do I continue to push on-premises solutions, including selling physical servers and other hardware or do I move to the cloud and possibly reduce my upfront margins but get in for the long run?
We’ve seen some partner like Genatec in Montreal who are still running key applications on premise with Windows Server, while moving other workloads directly in the cloud such as email & productivity with O365 and are maintaining healthy growth when doing so (check out Genatec's case study here). With Windows Server 2003 End of Supportcoming soon, you've got an amazing opportunity to enable your customers to begin taking advantage of the cloud, while reaffirming your relationship as the trusted IT advisor and single go to vendor for all things IT including the cloud. This point in time also provides you with an opportunity to think about how you can generate additional revenue streams with minimal investments on your end.
With Windows Server 2003 End of Supportcoming soon, you've got the opportunity to enable your customers to begin taking advantage of the cloud, while reaffirming your relationship as the trusted IT advisor and single go to vendor for all things IT including the cloud. A Blog published by Takeshi Numoto - Corporate Vice President, Cloud and Enterprise Marketing, Microsoft spoke to customers still using Windows server 2003 and the Avanade study shows there’s still a lot of work to be done in Canada. This point in time also provides you with an opportunity to think about how you can generate additional revenue streams with minimal investments on your end.
Consider Azure for example, Microsoft's Public Cloud Platform. Partner's today are able to offer End-to-End High-Availability Disaster Recovery solutions with Azure Site Recovery, which traditionally could have cost an upwards of $25-40K, typically out of reach for most SMB customers. Today, you can offer this to your customers running the latest version of Windows Server at a minimal cost (we est. approx. $1300/VM per year). Of course, the opportunities don’t end there. Microsoft Azure offers Server backup capabilities, highly cost effective cloud storage and the ability to spin up and scale up Virtual Machine in minutes, all among the most common SMB scenarios we are seeing Azure being used for today. So what does this mean for IT Resellers? This means Microsoft Azure offers new recurring revenue streams that may not have previously existed within your business. On top of the upfront margins (we est. 10%), you can increase your profitability even further through the professional/managed services you offer to setup and manage these new workloads.
So how do you get started and what are we offering to help?
For a limited time we've got a number of Rich Cashback Incentives on Azure & Office 365, as well as on Windows Server & SQL Serverhere .
Our amazing Distributors also have great bundle offers on Windows Server + Azure to make it even easier to get you started- contact your Distribution Rep. to learn more
We've also got a fantastic set of resources and trainings that will help you easily learn how you can take advantage of Azure:
Azure Sure Step Website- Our Partner One Stop Shop for Azure resources including licensing, marketing & sales.
Azure Expert Series Bi-weekly Azure Webinar for partners with open discussion - signup here
Azure Coffee Cup Videos- Short YouTube clips demonstrating how to setup different Azure services, such as Backup, Site Recovery, VMs and more! watch here
Azure Technical Training- Exclusively for Microsoft Partners available in-person or always available online .
If you're a MAPs, Silver or Gold Partner, you get free Azure internal use rights to try it out yourself! Go to aka.ms/ActivateIUR (You must have a Microsoft Account/Live ID which is associated with your MPN Membership admin rights in order to access this)
We hope this generates some thoughts, ideas on the opportunity ahead, for you our partners, and how Windows Server End of Support can be a great, compelling moment for you and your business.
As always, your feedback/ideas are welcome.
@jbrommet