Microsoft Azure Partner Community: focus on Office 365 – introduction

by Nick Johnson, PMP US Partner Technology Strategist for Microsoft Azure

The Microsoft Azure Partner Community is led by National Partner Technology Strategists from the Microsoft US Partner Team. Partner Community activities include blog posts, discussions on Yammer, newsletters, and community calls. Register for the February 19 Azure Partner Community call Watch previous Azure Partner Community calls on demand Read Azure Partner Community blog posts Join the Azure Partners group on Yammer Sign up for the US Azure Partner newsletter

This month, our Microsoft Azure Partner Community focus is on Office 365. I often hear questions like, “How do Office 365 and Azure work together?” or “I’m an Azure partner, and don’t know where to start with Office 365.” We’ll tackle these questions, and others, in our Azure Partner Community blog series starting today and leading up to our February 19 community call. 

Topics include:

• Partner resources for Azure and Office 365
• Identity management
• SharePoint and Azure
• Office 365 Apps and Azure for Developers

If you are currently an Azure-focused partner and are interested in adding additional cloud offerings, check out what’s available with Office 365 SaaS applications. This is the fastest growing Microsoft product ever, and it’s a great way to expand what you offer to help businesses move additional workloads to the cloud. 

Cloud-based applications for messaging, portals and collaboration, conferencing, IM, file sync/store/share, and enterprise social are very popular. Companies want to get out of the business of managing the infrastructure to run these applications. The same benefits clients experience with Azure hold true for Office 365 solutions: lower total cost of ownership, easier to administer, letting IT focus on more strategic projects, robust datacenter with security and high availability built right in, etc. 

Office 365 also allows you to bring a world-class suite of software to Windows, Android, and iOS devices.

In my next post, I’ll take a look at how identity management for Office 365 and Azure work together. Below, you’ll find recommended resources for getting up to speed on Office 365. And, if you are an Office 365 partner wanting to learn more about Azure, I’ve provided the comparable resources at the end of this post.

Partner resources for Office 365

Learn more about the opportunity and get started thinking about expanding your offerings with Office 365 cloud solutions with these resources.

Partner resources for Microsoft Azure

If you are a partner currently selling Office 365, Microsoft Azure is an opportunity for you to expand your cloud solution offerings. For your customers running Windows or Linux VMs, websites, mobile applications, video streaming services, SQL Servers, and other platform workloads, Azure presents a solution for your customers that you can offer.

If your customers have one of more of these scenarios, Azure can help you deliver a solution:

• Developers who need to spin up VMs for tests quickly
• Production servers or services that need to be included in a disaster recovery plan
• A need for scalable storage that is low cost and highly available
• Numerous SaaS applications with out of control user names and passwords to manage

Don’t let those opportunities go somewhere else. It is super-easy to get started on Azure and we invite you to give it a try. Take advantage of these resources to check out Azure:

Register for the February 19 Azure Partner Community call

Watch previous Azure Partner Community calls on demand

Read Azure Partner Community blog posts

Join the Azure Partners group on Yammer

Sign up for the US Azure Partner newsletter