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Thank you for a Successful 2016 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference

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What a thrilling and insightful Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto for 2016! It was a pleasure to host our Canadian partners, and those from around the world, in Toronto, and on behalf of Microsoft Canada and our WW teams, we would like to thank you for a successful and engaging WPC 2016!

Throughout the week, we emphasized our dedication to supporting the growth of your business -  through new technology innovations (for an overview of announcements, click here), new business opportunities, new resources (for a summary of these investments, here’s a great link) and the potential to expand partnerships, locally and globally.  Our passions are driven by our ambitions and our mission, of reinventing productivity and business processes, building the intelligent cloud platform and delivering a personal computing to empower every person and every organization to achieve more. It's truly an exciting time to be a Microsoft partner, as we're in the midst of what Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of the Cloud and Enterprise Group, called "a generational shift" of organizations seeking to move their business to the cloud. This period of unprecedented change that we’re in, creates new risk, but even more so, creates so much opportunity – opportunity that if embraced, will enable us to thrive individually, and collectively as an ecosystem!

Digital transformation as a partner opportunity

In the opening Vision Keynote, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated, "The entire Gross Domestic Product is being shaped by digital technology. Everyone in the audience has an opportunity to tap into this revenue stream."  He expands on the transformative power of technology in his LinkedIn post, Reinventing Business Processes. Together, we need to enable businesses of all sizes, across Canada to become digital companies – and I am also asking each of you, our partners to challenge yourself to equally, become digital companies.

Corporate VP, Gavriella Schuster also shared some recent results from IDC which estimates that by 2020, the greater cloud market will top $500 billion. Within that, Microsoft partners with more than 50 percent of their revenue in the cloud are attaching $5.87 of their own services for every $1.00 of Microsoft cloud solutions sold. And we’re all just barely tapping into the potential.  When you enable digital transformation across your customer’s business, not just in IT and operations, the opportunity grows even more.

Microsoft continues to empower our partners to develop groundbreaking market-disruptions:

  • building a trusted, secure cloud and deliver innovative customer solutions
  • providing enhanced online marketplaces where partners can digitally showcase their products and services
  • bringing together cloud technology, machine learning, and Artificial Intelligence to give partners the power to create applications that are changing the way people interact

I and the entire Canadian team continue to be amazed by the innovation you, our partners are driving across Canada – and it was great to recognize all of our award winners and finalists. As we shared in the Canadian keynote on Sunday afternoon, innovation can come from the smallest of places; from industries that we may not, at least obviously, view as innovative (remember the question, do cows need to take 10,000 steps a day); to very real, human scenarios like helping to locate missing children (view the Missing Children Society of Canada video here). Our innovation, and our opportunity is only limited by our own imagination – and where we can find inspiration for what is possible!

Microsoft has always been a partner-led company and always will be a partner-led company, which was once again referenced by Satya in his keynote. In this new era, we must continue to evolve, and embrace the attributes of the modern partner, or as IDC refers to it, the “Partner of the Future” – this is our opportunity together.

As WPC closes for yet another year, the amazing work you, our partners are doing, to empower digital transformation and drive our shared priority of customer success is why Judson Althoff concluded the North American WPC keynote by saying, "We are grateful and thankful for your partnership," and the Canadian team echoes that to all of our partners, across Canada!

Thank you for another incredible week together, and we look forward to seeing you next year for WPC 2017, July 9th to 13th, 2017 in Washington, DC.

If you would like to share or view content from WPC16, please see the links below.

 

Jason Brommet
Director‚ Partner Strategy & Channel Chief
Microsoft Canada
@jbrommet