Microsoft's director of partner business and development, Phil Goldie
Microsoft has announced three new Cloud Service Resellers (CSRs) as it looks to tighten its grip on the Cloud market in Australia.
The three new CSRs are Ingram Micro, Insight and SoftwareONE.
Microsoft director of partner business and development, Phil Goldie, told ARN the new Cloud resellers were a reaction to the strong growth the company had seen in the first half of the year, especially demand for hybrid Cloud across its Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) partners.
“It’s a response to increased demand for all things Cloud. For the first part of the year we’ve focused on CSPs, such as our public Cloud resell capacity with Ingram and Rhipe. Today we’re announcing with SPLA that we will have sufficient capacity to address what we know is the growing demand for hybrid solutions,” he said.
“The SPLA business at Microsoft continues to be one of the highest growth areas in terms of licenses. There’s a lot of customer and partner led demand for those products.”
Goldie said the demand had been driven by Microsoft’s Cloud ecosystem, especially platforms like Office 365, Microsoft Azure and Dynamics CRM Online.
The contracts with each CSR are not yet fully confirmed.
“We’ve certainly made the decision that each of those partners are great additional SPLA partners. There is still some work to do surrounding the contractual and systems obligations that will take some more time around each partner. The work now is to onboard them, and get the systems up and running over the next few months, to make sure they’re in market as fast as they can be,” he said.
When finalised, the three proposed new CSRs will join Microsoft’s two existing CSRs, Dicker Data and Rhipe.
Goldie said Ingram Micro, Insight and SoftwareONE came to the fore following a three-month RFI selection process which assessed the companies’ unique value proposition in growing the Cloud market in Australia along with their capacity to offer customer and partner support and investments in sales and marketing.
“All three are currently very strong partners for us - Ingram at the distribution level; Insight and SoftwareONE are very big licensing solution partners. Typically, those two sell around open and enterprise level agreement licenses. Each of the three brings something unique to the table. Ingram are a two-tier, five solution provider and also a partner for the public Cloud. Their ability to roll out SPLA licensing really assists them in rolling out hybrid solutions," he said.
“SoftwareONE has a very unique proposition in terms of helping out ISVs into the Cloud, they have got some very good IP surrounding that. Insight has a very unique take on a number of enterprise and mid-market customers that are moving to shared services models, both in the commercial and public sector environments."
Ingram Micro, Insight and SoftwareONE will share more details as they gear up for launch.
“We will, of course, continue to provide our services through other purchasing mechanisms like the Cloud Solution Provider [CSP] Program, Open & Select Licensing, Enterprise Agreements and directly through the web,” he said.
Ingram Micro A/NZ vice president and managing director, Matt Sanderson, said the announcement makes his company the only distributor in Australia to offer the complete Microsoft Cloud portfolio.
“We believe it is critical to have choice and flexibility in how products are licensed across the breadth of on premise, hosted or fully public cloud and Ingram Micro now has the capability to facilitate this in its entirety. What’s more, as Ingram Micro is already an established Microsoft SPLA partner outside of Australia, we have an experienced support team whose knowledge will be leveraged to implement best practice locally," he said.
Insight's A/NZ general manager, Matt Hendra, said that his company now delivers more Cloud options than any other Microsoft partner, as the only License Solutions Provider (LSP), Cloud Services Reseller and 1Tier Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP) in Australia.
“Insight's continued investment in Microsoft Cloud technologies will provide new and existing clients with more choices. Insight offers more flexible and load appropriate licensing options to create maximum opportunities for clients as we all embrace a truly hybrid environment," he said.
Goldie would not be drawn on any specific growth or sales projections from onboarding these new partners.
“We certainly have targets agreed to with each of the partners, but there aren’t any details we can share publicly at this stage,” he said. “What we’re looking for these three partners to bring additional growth to the table. “We’re excited to have them help accelerate that.”
