The channel should expect that the next stage of digital transformation is long-term hybrid working and prepare their customers for that inevitability, according to Cielo Costa’s CEO, Ali Sanaei.
Sanaei told UC Today that as restrictions start to lift and a physical return to the office beckons, partners should be encouraging customers to implement technologies to facilitate a hybrid working model to accommodate employees who will work both at home and at the office.
“Right now there is no hybrid situation because everyone’s working remotely,” he explained.
“But the next wave [of digital transformation] will be about coming up with a hybrid solution where people will be sat in a meeting room with a whiteboard, alongside people working remotely and they will need to be equally engaged.
“What we need to adapt to is having a hybrid situation and allowing that to happen. As it stands, Microsoft has already recognised that; they’ve introduced new sets of tools, including whiteboards within Teams. There are other tools online – before Microsoft brought out whiteboard – that we’re using with our clients to help them have a virtual whiteboard.”
Cielo Costa started life as a Microsoft consultancy specialising in SharePoint and Office 365 seven years ago but has found itself increasingly working with clients on Teams and collaboration products over the years.
It has doubled its headcount to 24 in the past 12 months and Sanaei expects that staff numbers will hit 30 before this year is out.
“As time has gone on, we’ve tried to become technology agnostic – almost ignoring what we specialise in,” he stated.
“As the team has grown, we’ve now got a variety of people and they specialise in different areas, so we can listen to our clients, see what their needs are and then bring in the technology. Most of the time we use Microsoft technologies but sometimes we start from scratch with a custom solution.”
Cielo Costa was recently awarded Microsoft Gold partner status in Cloud Productivity, as well as becoming Cyber Essentials Plus certified. As a Microsoft Gold partner, the MSP receives continuous online technical support, news and updates directly from the vendor, among other benefits.
“We’ve tried to become a Microsoft Gold partner for some time and being a smaller business, it’s difficult, but it’s definitely a big milestone for us,” he elaborated.
“There were some initial delays because bigger decisions were put off for later, but we got there in the end. Over the past year, we’ve done a lot of apps and solutions for our clients, which contributed to our seat count and our referrals with Microsoft, which is needed to get the Gold status.
“This is an opportunity for us to work closely with Microsoft; We’ve done a lot of projects, especially in the last 12 months, around Teams, Power Platform, SharePoint and Azure. This [accreditation] is a big enabler for more leads from Microsoft and for them to support and trust us with more complex projects.”
With Gold partner status now attained, Sanaei is focusing this year on promoting the company and getting its message out to potential clients.
“We’ve done a lot of fantastic work that only a small number of clients are aware of because we’ve been very referral–driven, as opposed to marketing and letting the world know what we’ve done,” he explained.
“We want to change that so we can acquire new clients and offer them our boutique–style services to be able to expand that and provide that to more customers. New customers bring more revenue; we had a very healthy 12 months last year and this year has already started off well, so we’re definitely set to grow in terms of our customer base.”
