5 must-read eBooks that will help you Advance your Cloud Business

The boom of the Cloud economy is encouraging IT companies to start thinking about the Cloud as a profitable choice to strengthen their business. For those who recognize the opportunity, what happens along the way is a business transformation journey that requires full commitment to build a solid, sustainable Cloud business.

Many partners are working out how they can earn from selling Cloud services. To help partners address how to increase profitably and identify new opportunities to expand the scope of their business, Microsoft and IDC have conducted research to create a series of eBooks full of insights for Cloud Partners.

The research is based on benchmark data from over 750 solution providers across eight countries, and in-depth interviews from 25 successful Microsoft partners for whom the Cloud is the foundation of their business. Regardless of whether you consider yourself a value-added reseller, a systems integrator, IT consultant, managed service provider or independent software vendor, the eBook series has practical ideas for every business.

Modern Microsoft Partner Series

Below you can download all the eBooks from the Modern Microsoft Partner Series:

Part 1: The Booming Cloud Opportunity: The first eBook of the series kicks off with an overview and relevant data about the pace of the Cloud opportunity. It provides the latest market overview data, information about how Cloud Partners are outperforming their peers, customer viewpoints on the Cloud and trends, and advice for partners at various Cloud maturity levels.

“We really believe that Cloud computing is the new normal. For anyone who is looking to build a new app, using a public Cloud, such as Azure, is a no-brainer. In the last year, we have not come across even a single scenario where a customer is looking to build a new innovative solution and they are going to deploy that in their own datacenter”, Anil Singh, Founder and CEO, Hanu Software

Part 2: Differentiate to stand out: Successful partners will be known for something. They could be masters in technology, or a vertical, or a business process, often regardless of their geography. Differentiation is key to standing out in a competitive Cloud marketplace. The second part of the series describes various strategies of differentiation that Cloud Partners can opt for, such as focus and specializing by vertical, using Intellectual Property (IP) as a differentiator or how to leverage partnering alliances.

“When Microsoft started talking about IP saying you need your own value-added IP, I thought, “What are they talking about? We don’t have any developers or coders in-house.” Then, we identified that we needed to build IP. Now we’re actually actively looking to contract product development people, coders, and developers.”, David Verschaffelt, Director, Atmospheric

Part 3: Modernize sales and marketing: An IDC research study with B2B customers found that 65% of them had already researched and made a purchase decision before they engaged with a sales rep, emphasizing why partners must modernize the way they market themselves now. This eBook provides ideas from successful partners and advice to discover the “secret sauce” of modern sales and marketing.

“We know that we need to be very market-oriented. We have a tremendous amount of innovation that happens in the company and we say not everyone is in sales. The sales role is to go and close a deal. We say everyone is in marketing.”, Marc Fletcher, Head of Marketing and Sales, Intervate

Part 4: Optimize your operations: Profitable solution providers take operations seriously, focusing on repeatable engagements through methodology, automation, and tools. This eBook provides guidance for optimizing operations, starting from when the Cloud is added to your business model and continuing through to building a robust Cloud revenue stream. There are some key things you should keep in mind - anything you can do to build efficiency in your business.

“We use a lot of accelerator templates and process accelerators and have found the value to be on average five times the execution cost.”, Mark Seeley, CEO, Intellinet

Part 5: Define customer lifetime value: Successful partners are proactive at helping their customers move higher up the maturity continuum and become the catalyst for accelerating business innovation. This eBook focuses on how to achieve long-term customer value. The Cloud model has changed the relationship, and the moment of a Cloud sale is only the beginning of the customer purchase transaction. It is the ongoing use and deep engagement of your user base that will ensure continuing usage of the service and ongoing renewals.

“We started this effort because of what we were hearing in the marketplace and what customers were looking for from a partner standpoint: someone to help them around the digital experience and to transform organizations. A lot of the digital experience thing is us focusing on our customers’ customers. How can we help them be more competitive in the marketplace? They’re asking us to bring insights and technology that enable that end customer experience.”, Matt Morse, General Manager, Perficient

Would you like to learn how the DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND THE CLOUD OPPORTUNITY is changing the IT business world? Or are you interested in learning how you can best LAND OFFICE 365 SALES AND EXPAND YOUR CLOUD BUSINESS?
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