According to Microsoft corporate vice-president, Gavriella Schuster, mixing competition with co-operation is what top-performing businesses do.
“How you define your business and who you choose to partner with must evolve as more and more companies embrace digital transformation. Defining your unique core is critical to finding truly complementary partnerships, so look inward to figure out your secret sauce.
“Remember
that it’s not about becoming a different partner – it’s about doing things
differently,” she said.
Microsoft corporate vice-president, Mitra Azizirad, predicts that the app explosion will open doors for partners. She said today’s enterprises are in the ‘experience’ business now and must find ways to deliver high-quality mobile experiences to their users at scale.
“Everyone wants immersive and personal experiences that react in real-time, are intelligent and brilliantly predictive. How you help your customers meet the new user expectation for these rich application experiences is critical. To do this, enterprises need to leverage data and cloud in new ways.
“Taking their entire business mobile often means building hundreds of apps. Embracing an ‘app factory’ mindset and delivering continuous innovation at scale means tremendous opportunity,” she stated.
Delivering managed services that maximise customer cloud experience is lucrative, according to Microsoft vice-president, Aziz Benmalek.
“According to a study conducted by 451 research, managed services is projected to be a $43 billion market by 2018, growing at a rate 60 per cent faster than the growth in infrastructure only services.
“From consulting to migrations, to operations management, managed services provides you with an opportunity to add a new, higher margin business line that can provide a more stable, steady stream of recurring revenue,” he said.
Microsoft chief technology officer, Eduardo Kassner, addressed the importance of establishing credibility and differentiating with expertise. He stressed the importance of investing deeply in building technical skills, having an all-hands approach to blogging, and getting involved in the community.
“It’s clear that top performing partners are committed to prioritising continuous learning. With a skilled team, partners can build new business opportunities using the latest technology innovations like Artificial Intelligence, bots, and the IoT,” he said.
Lastly, Microsoft corporate vice-president, Tony Townes-Whitley, mentioned that innovation, through cloud and related emerging technologies, is delivering new ways to expand economic opportunity and address some of humanity’s most pressing problems.
“In fact, the World Economic Forum references ICT as the backbone of the fourth industrial revolution in which cloud is the engine and data is the fuel. There is no shortage of impact when partners leverage the cloud for global good.
“One of the greatest opportunities for partners in 2017 will be to promote positive change by ensuring that the benefits of cloud computing are broadly shared,” he added.
