When Jon Roskill was named Microsoft Channel Chief a few weeks ago, The VAR Guy openly wondered if Roskill would ever hire or name a Cloud Channel Chief. Time for The VAR Guy to eat some crow: Microsoft essentially has a Cloud Channel Chief in place. Her name is Gretchen O’Hara, senior director of Microsoft’s channel cloud strategy. And O’Hara says Microsoft is launching a range of tools to help VARs and MSPs develop their cloud pricing and profitability strategies. Here are the details.

During Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2010 (WPC10), O’Hara described the Partner Profitability Modeler Tool, which apparently helps VARs to focus on pricing and profit areas such as…

  • Business Productivity Infrastructure Solutions
  • Mobility
  • Microsoft Online Dynamic CRM
  • Microsoft Online Business Productivity Online Suite
  • Microsoft Online Windows Intune
  • Managed Exchange Services: Customer on-premise vs. Partner hosted

No doubt, Microsoft is making progress with BPOS. But how much progress? A year ago, roughly 5,000 partners had signed up for BPOS. Today, that figure is 16,000, O’Hara says.

But The VAR Guy wonders: Are those 16,000 partners really selling multiple BPOS engagements? Or are those 16,000 partners merely kicking the BPOS tires? O’Hara says roughly 8,000 of the 16,000 partners have been selling multiple BPOS deals.

That’s a helpful tidbit of information but The VAR Guy wonders how many BPOS partners have sold more than 1,000 SaaS seats so far… Our resident blogger will keep digging for the answer.

Meanwhile, O’Hara says Microsoft will put more effort behind promoting Windows Azure to channel partners as well. For more on Azure vs. BPOS, check out this related blog over on MSPmentor.

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2 Comments on “Microsoft Cloud Channel Chief Talks BPOS Partner Profitability”

  1. Dave Steeves Says:
    September 16th, 2010 at 10:04 am

    We have sold and deployed 2 clients with 1000 seats or more (1000 and 1300). We also have multiple 100 seat plus clients.

  2. The VAR Guy Says:
    September 16th, 2010 at 10:06 am

    Dave: The VAR Guy is impressed. Care to share more details? Simply email The VAR Guy (thevarguy [at] NineLivesMediaInc [dot] com). Perhaps your deployments/customer wins would make for good blog entries?
    -TVG

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