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Microsoft Reaches Partners with Message of Cloud Adoption

By Casey Houser
Contributing Writer

Microsoft (News - Alert) is reportedly at it again, boisterously and fervently proclaiming the necessity for cloud service adoption at this year's Worldwide Partner Conference.

A recent PCWorld article discussed the fact that nearly every Microsoft representative in attendance was pushing cloud adoption, and the urgent need for businesses to throw themselves wholeheartedly into the cloud, or otherwise find themselves left out in the cold.

This is apparently not a new tactic arising from the computing giant. Redmond has reportedly given this same spiel for years, only to see it fall on ears that were not quite ready to hear what it had to say. At this year's conference, though, businesses chimed in and showed that they were finally ready to accept the necessity of the cloud, and the reality and ramifications of being on the tail end of the pack.

One reseller, Bilgi Birikim Sistemleri, is apparently interested in Office 365 because it contains SharePoint Online, a cloud-based service that allows business employees to access Sharepoint services from anywhere. Süleyman Mert, deputy general manager at BBS, commented on his company's reaction to Microsoft's pitch for cloud services this year.

"Last year, I was skeptical, but now I'm seeing more adoption and acceptance of the cloud among our clients," Mert said.

Mert also indicated that he believed mobile security and IT management were two facets of enterprises that tended to necessarily work alongside cloud deployments. These sorts of features are available through Microsoft's Enterprise Mobility Suite.

Furthermore, Microsoft's in cloud services, such as SaaS (News - Alert), IaaS, and PaaS, are showing signs of growth with resellers that have long offered its products. Revera, a cloud services provider in New Zealand, has sold Microsoft products for nearly 10 years, and it has reportedly not found a majority of its business revenue generated from the sale of those products. However, those sales have been increasing as of late, and that is drawing the interest of sellers such as Keith Archibald, a Revera innovation program manager.

"Microsoft is a smaller part of our business, but it's having a bigger impact," Archibald said.

It is clear that the cloud is growing part of business models overall. Cloud adoption is taking off in various sectors such as government and education, and small businesses to large enterprises are getting in on the game. The opinions of various vendors and attendees at the Worldwide Partner Conference shows that Microsoft's message is finally getting through, as well.