A New Era Together: Partners and the Microsoft Cloud OS

Takeshi Numoto

Here at the Worldwide Partner Conference, it’s exciting to hear the buzz about the opportunities that are in store for our partners and their customers in the cloud. Over the past year alone, we have delivered a number of new solutions to empower the transition to the cloud – from the release of System Center 2012 and SQL Server 2012 to new Windows Azure services and the release candidate of Windows Server 2012 – and we will have more new solutions in the future.

As Satya Nadella recently described, we are bringing this all together to usher in the era of the “Cloud OS.” With Windows Azure and Windows Server at its core, the Cloud OS takes our strong legacy of running the highest scale application services and petabyte-sized datacenters to the next generation of computing and delivers a modern platform for the world’s applications. And for our customers, this will ultimately result in lower IT costs, faster innovation and greater agility. 

Partner Opportunity with the Cloud OS

Our partners are essential to helping customers realize these benefits. The new opportunities that we announced today are the latest examples of how we are helping our partners seize business opportunities in the cloud. For example, hosting service providers can now use their Windows Server datacenters to deliver some of the same services running in the Windows Azure public cloud. It’s a great example of our strategy to deliver consistent capabilities that span customer’s private cloud on-premises, service provider clouds and Windows Azure.

That consistency is one of our keys to helping partners succeed and profit by betting on Microsoft and the Cloud OS. Partners are able to use the same familiar application development and management tools, as well as common data, identity and virtualization platforms across the Cloud OS. This means that they can carry their current skills, experience and investments forward as well as help their customers do the same.

The Cloud OS strategy reflects our longstanding practice of democratizing technology to fuel partner and customer innovation. I believe it truly sets Microsoft apart. It is exciting to see more and more partners and customers – including the likes of T. Rowe Price, Lufthansa Systems, Munder Capital and ING Direct – choose our solutions over other vendors as they progress to the cloud. As we highlighted today, we now have even more resources in place to help partners more easily migrate customers from another platform to ours.

One great example is how Microsoft Gold Partner FyrSoft leveraged our cloud technology along with new resources to move windows-and-doors manufacturer Pella Corp. from VMware to our private cloud. In doing so, Pella Corp.’s IT organization has gone beyond virtualization, enabling more agile, manageable services to ensure their customers’ windows and doors are built and delivered correctly – all while saving costs and improving the company’s bottom line during challenging economic times.

But as I am learning here at WPC, stories like FyrSoft and Pella’s aren’t unusual. Many of our partners have stories to tell about bringing their innovative solutions and services to life on the Microsoft platform, and they are truly inspiring. I look forward to seeing what Microsoft and its partners together can accomplish in the era of the Cloud OS. 

Posted by Takeshi Numoto
Corporate Vice President, Server & Tools Business, Microsoft

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