Microsoft Corporate VP of Worldwide Partnerships Jon Roskill indicated the Microsoft Partner Network may soon require those channel pros looking to achieve Gold competency levels to include Office 365 and other cloud services in their portfolios. Roskill revealed that bit of information and a little more about Microsoft’s channel roadmap in an interview with Redmond Channel Partner.
Of course, “soon” is a relative measure — any changes made to the Gold tier would go in effect for the 2014 fiscal year, which begins in 21 months. But all the same, Roskill said his team already sees the best partners as the ones who make the cloud a significant part of their business.
To wit, RCP quoted Roskill:
“I think that would be a very reasonable thing to spec out to people. It doesn’t mean we don’t love you if you’re not doing [cloud sales] for some reason, but we also want to be very clear that gold is differentiating our best partners and there’s an expectation around that.”
Of course, Roskill said 21 months is a long time, and any changes would have to be made after long discussions with Microsoft partners.
It’s no secret that Microsoft has been heavily promoting its cloud services amongst the service provider community. Obviously, the major push has been for the Microsoft Office 365 productivity suite, but there’s room in the channel for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Microsoft Windows Intune and Microsoft Windows Azure. Essentially, Microsoft has identified the trend that moving to the cloud is no longer optional, and moves must be made.
So what do you think? Prelude to a Gold partner revamp or a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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Matthew, has Microsoft offered any additional information here?
Our company is a regional IT service provider. We already partner with 3rd party hosted exchange and hosted sharepoint providers. We’re a long time Microsoft partner and we’re monitoring Office 365′s progress but we prefer to maintain our existing hosted partnerships.
Please continue to update this story. Thank you.
Kevin: Good question. We haven’t heard anything, but given the timetable Roskill indicates here, we may not get any solid details for months.
As the co-author of Thinking of…Selling Microsoft Office 365? I know that Microsoft is working really hard to provide its partners the information and guidance they need to start up a portfolio that includes Microsoft cloud services. I don’t see this as sound and fury nor sabre rattling, rather it is timely to remind that the cloud is unstoppable and Microsoft want its partners to be part of and to succeed to earn money in the cloud. If you want the inside story about the why, what and how of Office 365 with a Microsoft partner perspective then read the book available from numerous online stores. Announcement to follow shortly re availability of updated edition of the book with as yet unreleased information from Microsoft.
Frank: Keep us posted on that book update and Microsoft update…
-jp