Sick Gaming
Microsoft - CVP Gavriella Schuster announces update to Microsoft partner ecosystem - Printable Version

+- Sick Gaming (https://www.sickgaming.net)
+-- Forum: Computers (https://www.sickgaming.net/forum-86.html)
+--- Forum: Windows (https://www.sickgaming.net/forum-89.html)
+--- Thread: Microsoft - CVP Gavriella Schuster announces update to Microsoft partner ecosystem (/thread-94537.html)



Microsoft - CVP Gavriella Schuster announces update to Microsoft partner ecosystem - xSicKxBot - 04-14-2020

CVP Gavriella Schuster announces update to Microsoft partner ecosystem

<div style="margin: 5px 5% 10px 5%;"><img src="https://www.sickgaming.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/cvp-gavriella-schuster-announces-update-to-microsoft-partner-ecosystem.jpg" width="500" height="281" title="" alt="" /></div><div><div><img src="https://www.sickgaming.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/cvp-gavriella-schuster-announces-update-to-microsoft-partner-ecosystem.jpg" class="ff-og-image-inserted"></div>
<p>Historically around this time&nbsp;of the year,&nbsp;I like to&nbsp;share an update on the&nbsp;state of the&nbsp;partner ecosystem&nbsp;from Microsoft’s One Commercial Partner (OCP) organization.&nbsp;Given the impact and magnitude of the COVID-19 situation, I think now more than ever,&nbsp;it’s important to continue to focus&nbsp;on&nbsp;our&nbsp;path&nbsp;forward.&nbsp;In this vein, you may have seen the information I recently shared on&nbsp;<a href="https://blogs.partner.microsoft.com/mpn/responding-to-covid-19-partner-guidance-and-resources/?ln=en-us" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">resources</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://blogs.partner.microsoft.com/mpn/responding-to-covid-19-microsoft-partner-network/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">program updates</a>&nbsp;to specifically help partners navigate&nbsp;through the&nbsp;COVID-19&nbsp;world we are all now operating in.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>The&nbsp;Microsoft partner community&nbsp;is&nbsp;a powerful ecosystem.&nbsp;For decades,&nbsp;it&nbsp;has been and continues to&nbsp;be&nbsp;at the center of how we bring technologies and business transformation to customers in markets around the world.&nbsp;Today, Microsoft partners are playing a critical role helping&nbsp;companies&nbsp;everywhere&nbsp;adjust to a new way of working<em>.&nbsp;</em>The&nbsp;remote-work,&nbsp;business continuity solutions and services&nbsp;they’re delivering&nbsp;during this global pandemic&nbsp;will be the foundation of workplace productivity moving forward.&nbsp;</p>
<p>With this in mind,&nbsp;I’d like to share some updates on where we’re going and what we’re doing to&nbsp;help&nbsp;our partners&nbsp;continue to&nbsp;make more possible&nbsp;in the&nbsp;months&nbsp;and years to come.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Updates</strong></p>
<p>We&nbsp;support&nbsp;partners&nbsp;in&nbsp;several&nbsp;ways&nbsp;through&nbsp;our&nbsp;extensive technology portfolio,&nbsp;global reach, training and skill investments, but&nbsp;we are&nbsp;continuing&nbsp;to&nbsp;evolve how we work together&nbsp;in order to&nbsp;maximize the value of&nbsp;their&nbsp;partnership with Microsoft.&nbsp;Here&nbsp;are some of the things we’re working on:</p>
<p><strong>Program updates:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Increased learning opportunities:</strong>&nbsp;We’re giving partners&nbsp;increased access to training, support and go-to-market services.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>Focus on differentiated value</strong>: Partners will have&nbsp;more&nbsp;options to differentiate their skills and expertise to customers with new competencies, advanced specializations and&nbsp;through&nbsp;the&nbsp;Azure&nbsp;Expert&nbsp;MSP&nbsp;Program.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>Rewarding customer success:&nbsp;</strong>Partners are<em>&nbsp;</em>increasingly earning rewards for driving strong results and positive outcomes for their customers, with reward models specifically designed to help build and accelerate growth.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Enhanced tools:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Partner Center</strong>:&nbsp;Partners are onboarding this year to Partner Center, which provides a&nbsp;centralized experience for partners and a&nbsp;single place to manage their relationship with Microsoft, their customers and other partners. Streamlining a number of processes into one place makes it easier for partners to&nbsp;do&nbsp;business with&nbsp;Microsoft.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>On-demand&nbsp;support:&nbsp;</strong>We’re working on new ways to give partners quicker and easier access to Microsoft support to help them better solve challenges and meet customer needs.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>Evolved co-selling&nbsp;programs</strong>: To further support our commitment to shared growth and profitability&nbsp;within ecosystem, partners&nbsp;can access co-selling programs so they can accept and share referrals from Microsoft (first-party solutions) and other partners (third-party solutions).&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<p>These&nbsp;capabilities are just the beginning. They&nbsp;only scratch the surface,&nbsp;as we&nbsp;continue to prioritize investments that support new opportunities to position our partners&nbsp;for growth&nbsp;in&nbsp;the future.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Investment&nbsp;strategy</strong>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Fueled by the&nbsp;market&nbsp;opportunities we see&nbsp;through&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://news.microsoft.com/2019/12/18/new-research-reveals-that-across-industries-organizations-are-embracing-tech-intensity-as-a-key-driver-of-competitive-advantage/" target="_blank">tech intensity</a>, digital transformation, and the cloud, we need to continue evolving in order to meet emerging customer needs and expectations.&nbsp;We’re committed to investing in and delivering what partners need to innovate, grow their businesses and deliver on the promise of digital transformation for customers across organizations and industries.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>As we look&nbsp;ahead,&nbsp;here&nbsp;are&nbsp;just&nbsp;a few&nbsp;of the&nbsp;areas&nbsp;for&nbsp;partner&nbsp;opportunity we&nbsp;see:&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Teams for&nbsp;modern&nbsp;business:&nbsp;</strong>Now more than ever, the ability to&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/03/19/microsoft-teams-3-everything-you-need-connect-teammates-be-more-productive/" target="_blank">connect remotely&nbsp;is vital</a>, whether that be with coworkers, friends or family. Partners have an opportunity to&nbsp;support&nbsp;activation and usage for their customers.&nbsp;We’re seeing&nbsp;adoption and&nbsp;change management partners&nbsp;focus&nbsp;on extensions to further customize to their customers’ business needs.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>Tech&nbsp;intensity:</strong>&nbsp;Partners have an increasing number of ways they can help meet customers’ emerging needs and expectations. One is supporting their movement toward tech intensity, as&nbsp;organizations move past adopting the latest technologies and develop their own digital capabilities.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>Azure&nbsp;migration:&nbsp;</strong>The latest versions of Windows Server,&nbsp;SQL Server&nbsp;and Windows Virtual Desktop&nbsp;offer tremendous opportunity for businesses to secure and modernize their workloads. Our partners are in a unique position to help customers migrate to the cloud and unlock the benefits of Azure&nbsp;to transform workloads with the latest data and AI capabilities.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>Security:&nbsp;</strong>While the cloud has opened the door for&nbsp;a myriad of&nbsp;possibilities, it has also made security a top priority for customers.&nbsp;Security&nbsp;is&nbsp;engineered into our products,&nbsp;but&nbsp;we are&nbsp;counting on&nbsp;partners to help secure the&nbsp;customer’s environment from endpoint to datacenter.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>New&nbsp;offerings</strong>&nbsp;</p>
<p>To&nbsp;ensure our partners have the resources and support necessary&nbsp;to grow their businesses, we&nbsp;are&nbsp;consistently&nbsp;listening&nbsp;to&nbsp;feedback&nbsp;and&nbsp;ideas. This helps&nbsp;inform&nbsp;the investments we’re making and the ways we’re evolving to&nbsp;drive even greater value.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>Below&nbsp;are&nbsp;two&nbsp;offerings we’ve&nbsp;recently&nbsp;launched:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>New&nbsp;advanced&nbsp;specialization:&nbsp;</strong>Competencies remain important for all partners, but advanced specializations provide the opportunity to further highlight technical scenarios where partners are delivering high quality services and&nbsp;differentiate themselves from the competition.&nbsp;At Inspire 2019, we unveiled five new&nbsp;specializations,&nbsp;and&nbsp;recently&nbsp;added&nbsp;one more to the mix&nbsp;on&nbsp;April 7.&nbsp;The&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://partner.microsoft.com/membership/advanced-specialization#tab-content-2" target="_blank">Adoption and Change Management&nbsp;Advanced&nbsp;Specialization</a>&nbsp;allows&nbsp;partners to showcase proven expertise in Adoption and Change Management to drive usage of Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and Yammer.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>New Teams Practice Development&nbsp;Playbook:&nbsp;</strong>The&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://aka.ms/teamsplaybook" target="_blank">Teams Practice Development Playbook</a>,&nbsp;launched on&nbsp;April 6,&nbsp;is designed to help partners understand the growth opportunity that Microsoft Teams provides&nbsp;to them&nbsp;as well as to&nbsp;their&nbsp;customers.&nbsp;Topics covered include&nbsp;which areas of Teams to focus on, how to cross-sell,&nbsp;suggestions for&nbsp;approaching&nbsp;governance, and an overview of add-ons and customizations.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<p>In addition, we’re proud that another one of our&nbsp;partners –&nbsp;Wipro Limited, a leading global information technology consulting and business process&nbsp;company&nbsp;–&nbsp;recently&nbsp;launched&nbsp;a&nbsp;dedicated Microsoft Business&nbsp;Unit (MBU).&nbsp;&nbsp;Wipro’s new&nbsp;business&nbsp;unit will focus on the development and evangelization of solutions leveraging Microsoft’s enterprise cloud services.&nbsp;Earlier this year,&nbsp;Tata Consultancy Services and HCL announced&nbsp;their own&nbsp;MBUs.&nbsp;</p>
<p>It’s exciting to see three new MBUs&nbsp;since the start of the fiscal year&nbsp;as it continues to&nbsp;affirm the benefits our partners see when they&nbsp;can&nbsp;dive deep with our solutions.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Global&nbsp;partner&nbsp;impact</strong>&nbsp;</p>
<p>We&nbsp;know that&nbsp;partners&nbsp;help&nbsp;make more possible. That&nbsp;sentiment&nbsp;rings especially true&nbsp;during&nbsp;the&nbsp;unprecedented&nbsp;times&nbsp;we’re operating in today.&nbsp;Every day I hear stories of partners stepping up to&nbsp;address&nbsp;scientific and business continuity needs related to COVID-19.&nbsp;Here are just a few:&nbsp;</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Rescale</strong>:&nbsp;Researchers, engineers and scientists are in a race against time,&nbsp;running countless computer simulations to develop test kits and a vaccine. Unfortunately, researchers often face barriers to running large-scale simulations.&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rescale-partners-with-google-cloud-and-microsoft-azure-to-accelerate-the-race-for-covid-19-vaccine-with-cloud-supercomputers-for-researchers-301027160.html" target="_blank">Rescale</a>,&nbsp;a&nbsp;leader in enterprise big compute, has joined forces&nbsp;with Microsoft Azure&nbsp;and other tech companies&nbsp;to create a new initiative&nbsp;entitled&nbsp;“<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://techagainstcovid.com/" target="_blank">Tech vs COVID</a>”&nbsp;that immediately offers high performance computing (HPC)&nbsp;resources&nbsp;at no cost to teams working to develop test kits and vaccines for COVID-19.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>BlueYonder</strong>:&nbsp;COVID-19&nbsp;is having an enormous&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.blueyonder.com%2Fhow-covid-19-is-shifting-supply-chains%2F&amp;data=02%7C01%7Ctnguyen%40we-worldwide.com%7Cf9d1970646e94f53b91908d7d6807de1%7C3ed60ab455674971a5341a5f0f7cc7f5%7C0%7C1%7C637213719686724873&amp;sdata=KHC5z44ys%2FoVSXe9eAwekeDbBqr%2Ff29K%2BTjar5wXV3I%3D&amp;reserved=0" target="_blank">impact on global supply chain</a>. There is high demand for medical equipment and supplies, and a shortage of&nbsp;medical&nbsp;parts and products.&nbsp;Through&nbsp;real-time visibility, AI and machine learning, BlueYonder’s data science team is feeding data into its AI-driven Luminate Control Tower platform to help visualize and predict&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.blueyonder.com%2Fmitigating-the-impact-of-the-coronavirus-on-supply-chains-with-machine-learning-and-real-time-visibility%2F&amp;data=02%7C01%7Ctnguyen%40we-worldwide.com%7Cf9d1970646e94f53b91908d7d6807de1%7C3ed60ab455674971a5341a5f0f7cc7f5%7C0%7C1%7C637213719686724873&amp;sdata=HtMMjP5fpBsg1j%2BzRMnWIfSrJSu8%2FM%2FN2TiNM%2F0OYds%3D&amp;reserved=0" target="_blank">current and future impacts</a>&nbsp;of the coronavirus. The insight is helping governments and companies have better inventory visibility, predict shortages and adapt to the dynamic supply chain challenges.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>Velrada:&nbsp;</strong>Specially-trained Red Cross volunteers are calling Australians who are currently self-isolating,&nbsp;providing psychological first aid support during the&nbsp;COVID-19 pandemic. Working with Microsoft partner Velrada and using Dynamics 365 and Power BI,&nbsp;the&nbsp;Red Cross&nbsp;has&nbsp;deployed an easy-to-use platform that lets volunteers work from home as they make the calls and check on&nbsp;an&nbsp;individual’s well-being.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<p>These incredible stories are a testament to the impact&nbsp;our partners have&nbsp;in&nbsp;“normal” times&nbsp;and extraordinary times&nbsp;like we’re experiencing today.&nbsp;Satya recently noted that,&nbsp;“No one company is going to solve a challenge like this alone…Our&nbsp;unique role as a platform and tools provider allows us to connect the dots, bring together an ecosystem of partners, and enable organizations of all sizes to build the digital capability required to address these challenges.”&nbsp;</p>
<p>Echoing his sentiment above, as we&nbsp;navigate this&nbsp;unpredictable environment&nbsp;together, I want to&nbsp;assure&nbsp;our partners&nbsp;that&nbsp;Microsoft is&nbsp;committed to working&nbsp;to&nbsp;safeguard&nbsp;business continuity and&nbsp;ensure&nbsp;our ecosystem is set up&nbsp;to reach&nbsp;its&nbsp;full&nbsp;potential.&nbsp;We look forward to continuing to evolve&nbsp;our relationship&nbsp;with&nbsp;all of our partners&nbsp;in the&nbsp;months and years to come.&nbsp;</p>
</div>


https://www.sickgaming.net/blog/2020/04/13/cvp-gavriella-schuster-announces-update-to-microsoft-partner-ecosystem/