Better Together: How BitTitan and Fyrsoft turned a P2P network connection into an enduring success

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Microsoft’s P2P network

Microsoft’s P2P network is an open forum for partners to share knowledge, opportunities and insights regarding their engagements. For partners looking to expand into new verticals, seek out industry knowledge, and garner unsolicited opinions from partners engaged directly with customers, Microsoft’s P2P network offers a quick, community solution.

“[Microsoft’s P2P network] is a great place to learn about what is happening with Microsoft and their partners. Whether it is details on incentives, tools, or assistance with actual sales, it is a good place to pick the brains of partners to see what is working for them and their businesses, and to look for opportunities to assist others when their approaches or tools may have struggled in the marketplace,” said Dave Huth, Director of Alliances at BitTitan when asked about the value of the Microsoft P2P community.

The people at BitTitan are no stranger to partnering within the Microsoft partner network– they’ve staked their business on it. Referring to themselves as a “Cloud enablement company,” BitTitan is committed to engaging with other Microsoft partners to educate, automate, and help deliver lifetime value over the course of enduring Customer Engagement.

Completing the cloud journey and the modern MSP

For Huth and the team at BitTitan, the P2P community represents an opportunity to enable other partners to achieve their business goals. BitTitan, a Microsoft partner originally specializing in migration solutions via their popular and successful MigrationWiz solution, has since expanded their business to further support partners looking to grow their managed service practices.

“We don’t want to be perceived simply as a migration partner. We have expanded our business to teach other partners to become what we call ‘Modern MSPs.’ We work in lockstep with Microsoft’s current strategic initiatives, and see ourselves now as a cloud enablement partner – we are out there helping Microsoft partners scale, automate, and make their businesses more profitable. Migrating workloads to the cloud is certainly something we can do, and do well, but there is so much more work to be done once those workloads get there,” stated Huth when asked about the evolution of BitTitan’s services.

For Microsoft partners making the transition to cloud services, BitTitan understood long ago that migration services were just the first step in a long and evolving journey – once you migrated your customer’s workloads to the cloud, what then? BitTitan knew the importance of evolving your services. In order to be a successful partner, you need to know where to add value and know what pain points a customer might have following their initial migration to the cloud. For partners looking to make that next step, Microsoft’s P2P community is a place to ask questions, to feel out your strengths, and to call in reinforcements from partners like BitTitan to fill gaps you may have in your organization.

As a cloud enablement partner, BitTitan tries whenever possible to fill gaps partners feel they may have. CloudUniversity, a site where BitTitan partners can come and download educational assets generated by a team of experts, is an example of where marketing and value added services can intersect – BitTitan understands that a rising tide lifts all boats, and they understand the importance of learning and collaboration in a constantly evolving market.

Participating within Microsoft’s P2P community and partner events are great steps for partners looking to collaborate and complete their end-to-end cloud stories. Not every partner or every company can support their own service desk.

Not every partner can support every solution that is out there. Not every partner can complete all aspects of every engagement – but someone can – and the key is to know when to call in for an assist and to understand the value of working together.

Partner to partner engagement opportunities – the full court press

For partners looking to succeed in a crowded marketplace, it pays to know your differentiator and understand your weaknesses when looking for help. “When it comes to partner-to-partner engagements, we reach out and interact with partners in a number of ways and for a number of different reasons. WPC is our SuperBowl. We have meetings throughout the week with Microsoft’s executive and sales teams, and we make time to meet every partner we work with in person.

“We also host our own events and attend other, smaller events as well. We meet with industry leaders to identify problems or gaps where we can step in and add value. WPC is our chance to communicate directly with our most important partners, like Microsoft, while the smaller events are our chance to learn what’s next, what’s new, and stake out new territory for our organization and the organizations that partner with us.”
– Dave Huth, Director of Alliances, BitTitan

Making it real – a P2P network success story

When you think about partnering with other organizations, it pays to know what you do well, where you can improve, and what is out of your scope. When looking to build an organizational muscle that you may have lacked, look at how you can use educational tools other partners have in place to build similar strengths in your own organization. In instances where an engagement requires a specialty outside of your own, instances where you can’t afford to develop that muscle yourself, find a trusted partner who can assist in that aspect of a deployment – do not give business away simply because there is an aspect of an engagement you can’t do well in-house.

Fyrsoft, a Microsoft partner, knew the value of partnering when they reached out to BitTitan within the Microsoft P2P community. Fyrsoft had an engagement with a customer that required a quick migration of several workloads to Office 365 in a number of different locations. Their gap: they lacked a standard onboarding process from multiple, disparate environments and didn’t have the time or resources to attend to each location individually. After seeing their post in the community, BitTitan knew they could work together to not only help the customer with the migration, but open the door for further opportunities down the road.

Leveraging MigrationWiz, the automated migration and onboarding solution by BitTitan, Fyrsoft was able to meet the needs of their customer and move their workloads to the cloud. Through the success of this project, Fyrsoft established the basis to identify further opportunities over the lifetime of the solution. By adding managed services, Fyrsoft expanded their footprint with the customer. Increasing customer lifetime value is exactly what BitTitan strives to help partners achieve when using their technology.

Write your own P2P success story

For Fyrsoft, this engagement highlighted the value of teaming up within Microsoft’s P2P community. Working together, Fyrsoft and BitTitan were able to fulfill a difficult ask for a valuable client. Additionally, they were given an opportunity to upsell with the customer and to add managed services turning a one-time migration into an enduring and profitable relationship. For BitTitan, the engagement was an opportunity to do what they do best – enable modern cloud partners to grow and add value for their customers.

The experiences and specialties of Microsoft’s network of partners are their own most valuable resource. The P2P community is the place to plug into those resources, learning from one another’s mistakes and successes and growing your business in the process.