Technologies that facilitate remote working will be a key focus for customers as they emerge from the pandemic, according to Microsoft’s departing channel boss.
Gavriella Schuster (pictured above) gave the keynote presentation at the recent virtual Quarterly Briefing hosted by the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP) and encouraged partners to review their business models, their technology offerings, and where they can add value to customers.
She highlighted the trend for hybrid working as an area of focus for customers as many organisations will maintain this model post-pandemic. As a result, partners should invest in technologies that will ensure they can win opportunities in this area.
“We've learned a lot of lessons coming through the pandemic. We've learned the value of enabling employees to have remote work, that the level of productivity increases with the ability to give employees that level of flexibility and that will continue,” she told attendees.
“Along with that is the opportunity to take advantage of 5G applications through the Internet of Things, as well as mixed reality and the advent of enterprise voice.”
Schuster advised partners to invest in Teams, Windows Virtual Desktop, Power Apps, and Business Central to facilitate customers’ remote working needs.
“Those are all key things that will enable you to deliver a great remote work experience to your customers. That's where you're going to be able to optimise your value to the customer, as well as your monetisation opportunity,” she stated.
“Through the next 12 months, as customers find their feet and try to recover from the pandemic…they don't [want to] go back to the rigidity that they had before and they [want to] enable their employees to have more flexible workspaces and reduce their capex and real estate costs.”
Elsewhere in the keynote, Schuster urged partners to look at where they are adding value to customers and how they can maximise the profitability around those services. She recommended adopting a subscription-based revenue model.
“You have many options in how you structure your business for delivering value to your customer, but some of these are more valuable than others,” she explained.
“The two areas where margin profitability is growing is around managed services – managed security services, managed data services, and managed applications services are all hot with customers right now.
