Tag: microsoft

Schuster leaves Redmond

Posted on April 6, 2021 by - News

Gavriella Schuster, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Commercial Partner, has announced she is to leave her current role.

Rodney Clark will be the new corporate vice president of Global Channel Sales and channel chief for Microsoft. Having spent 23 years with Microsoft himself, Clark most recently served as vice president of IoT and Mixed Reality Sales.

In a LinkedIn post, the Microsoft veteran said it was time to “pass the torch”.

“Over the coming months I am committed to helping Rodney onboard and helping my teams close the year strong and prepare the business for the future”, Schuster said.

SoftwareONE teams up with Microsoft

Posted on March 26, 2021 by - News

SoftwareONE  has reached a strategic agreement with Microsoft to accelerate growth for application services and SAP on Microsoft Azure globally.

Under the arrangement:

• SoftwareONE will expand its application services and SAP on Azure capabilities by hiring and training up to 5,000 additional specialists by the end of 2023, in line with the SoftwareONE and Microsoft business plan and expected revenue growth over that period.

Microsoft acquires Marsden Group

Posted on March 18, 2021 by - News

Microsoft campusSoftware King of the World – that is Microsoft, folks –  has bought the rapid prototyping company The Marsden Group,

Vole’s corporate vice-president of cross-industry solutions Omar Abbosh said the acquisition will help Microsoft to create new customer value through experimentation and deep industry solutions based on the Microsoft cloud, edge and AI products.

The Marsden Group was already a Microsoft Gold Partner and works in the industrial, manufacturing and automotive sectors.

Microsoft improves channel programme

Posted on February 15, 2021 by - News

Microsoft campusSoftware king of the Word,  Microsoft, has spruced up its channel programme to encourage more co-selling across its ecosystem.

Microsoft’s improvements are aimed at getting more activity across the ecosystem with co-selling into SMEs and working more closely with ISVs as well as providing more online tools for the channel.

Firstly, there is a central partner centre that will unify all the vendor’s channel capabilities on a global basis on a single platform. It will give partners the opportunity to get access to co-sell, cloud solution provider programme details and other certification and incentives.

Nick Parker, corporate vice-president, global partner solutions at Microsoft, penned a blog post to usher in the changes and commented: “Partners influence more than 95 percent of Microsoft’s commercial revenue, either directly or in partnership with Microsoft.”

“Microsoft continued to see growth in the second quarter of FY21, especially across the Microsoft Commercial cloud. This trajectory is expected to continue as Microsoft partners build devices, applications and cloud-to-edge solutions,” he said.

Microsoft’s channel could boost UK economy

Posted on February 12, 2021 by - News

Microsoft campusA report has shown how Microsoft’s channel can play a key role in helping the UK economy recover from the pandemic and make a bob or two on the side.

Goldsmith’s, University of London has come up with a study which is based on an earlier creating a blueprint for UK competitiveness. That report was released in October and found a £48 billion opportunity for UK firms to improve their competitiveness by introducing some small changes.

Microsoft posts strong results

Posted on January 28, 2021 by - News

Microsoft campusMicrosoft posted strong second quarter figures, showing a sizable increase to both revenues and profits as a shift to remote working continues.

Revenues surged by 17 percent year on year to $43.1 billion while operating income grew by 29 percent to $17.9 billion.

In a webcast following the results, CEO Satya Nadella told investors that we are amid “the dawn of a second wave of digital transformation sweeping every company and every industry”.

The figures showed that Azure, Dynamics 365 and Office 365 were boosted by work from home economy and this lifted Microsoft’s second quarter and highlighted the strength of its cloud offerings.

US cloud is strangling European rivals

Posted on January 19, 2021 by - News

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google are killing off European Cloud provider according to new data from Synergy Research.

The European cloud market tripled since the beginning of 2017, hitting €5.9 billion in Q3 of 2020. But European cloud providers have seen market share decline from 26 percent to 16 percent.

WS, Google and Microsoft now account for two-thirds of the regional market, with the remainder of the market made up of smaller US and Asian providers, who are also losing market share.

Synergy also estimated that the full-year European cloud infrastructure services revenue for 2020 will be over €23 billion, a 31 percent increase on the previous year. IaaS and PaaS services makeup nearly 80 percent of that market and are growing much faster than the smaller hosted or managed private cloud segment, it revealed.

Microsoft, c3.ai and Adobe take on Salesforce

Posted on November 2, 2020 by - News

Microsoft campusMicrosoft and Adobe are launching a new platform to take on the market dominance of Salesforce.

C3 AI CRM is powered by the core functionality of Dynamics 365 and is combined with Adobe’s real-time customer profiles and journey management, as well as c3.ai’s industry-specific AI capabilities.

The AI-driven CRM platform is, it’s claimed, purpose-built for specific industries and uses data from any source to produce meaningful business insights. The collective claims that conventional CRM is not sufficient for the modern age, given that AI can’t be used to analyse much of the data because they weren’t built with the appropriate architectures.

Cyber security providers benefit from EU and local regulations

Posted on November 2, 2020 by - News

Enterprises in the UK are looking to cyber security providers to help them comply with European Union and local regulations, and protect data as employees work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report published today by Information Services Group (ISG).

The 2020 ISG Provider Lens Cyber Security – Solutions & Services Report, for the UK finds enterprises in the country counting on cyber security providers to help them comply with UK privacy and cyber security rules passed as the country separates from the European Union. At the same time, U.K. companies must continue to comply with E.U. data privacy regulations because of the country’s economic connections to continental Europe.

Jan Erik Aase, director and global leader, ISG Provider Lens Research said that UK enterprises are prioritising cyber security as most business processes have gone digital.

Content+Cloud endorsed by Microsoft

Posted on October 28, 2020 by - News

Microsoft has given Content+Cloud “preferred partner” accreditation, meaning that it is one of 17  top level firms worldwide delivering Project Cortex.

Project Cortex is a Microsoft attempt to integrate artificial intelligence with Microsoft 365.

Microsoft’s partner plans for Cortex includes three tiers – preferred, chartered and associate.

Content+Cloud worked on the development of Project Cortex. Because of that relationship, the firm claims that it had an early start in implementing the scheme.

It said that it has implemented Project Cortex at a major unnamed global financial institution.

Pay-once-use-forever ain’t dead yet says Microsoft,

Posted on September 24, 2020 by - News

Software King of the World is dusting off an Office licence which you only need to pay for once.  This is much like the good old days, when you owned your own software and did not have to always pay for a subscription.

A new perpetual licence version for Office will be released in the second half of 2021, Microsoft announced on Tuesday at the Ignite 2020 virtual event.

While the company did not disclose the name of the product, it did reveal that the new version of Office will be available for Windows and Mac.

Vole said that the details regarding the official name, pricing and availability of the product will be revealed later — so be still your beating hearts.

Microsoft spruces up Defender options

Posted on September 23, 2020 by - News

Microsoft campusSoftware king of the world, Microsoft, has announced a host of new security updates as part of its cunning plan to shove all its detection and event management services under the new Microsoft Defender brand.

The move means Vole’s extended detection and response (XDR) tools will now sit alongside its suite of security information and event management (SIEM) software, offered as a single umbrella brand .

For customers, this new direction will take the form of two separate packages, namely Microsoft 365 Defender, tailored for end-user environments, and Azure Defender, built for cloud and hybrid infrastructure. Both of these packages bring their own product name changes, with Microsoft effectively abandoning the ‘advanced threat protection (ATP)’ theme for most products.

Microsoft teams up with Refinitiv

Posted on September 14, 2020 by - News

Microsoft has announced a new strategic partnership with financial data firm Refinitiv which specialises in providing data, insights and analysis tools to financial communities.

The outfit is now creating new products and go-to-market services on Microsoft Azure, and expand its use of Microsoft 365 and Teams.

Microsoft says the strategic partnership will help Refinitiv’s customers to capitalise on growth opportunities, as well as strengthen its own commitment to the financial sector.

Cindy Rose president of Microsoft’s Western Europe division said: “Through the powerful combination of our shared skills, experience and technology, we can help organisations unlock valuable insights from their data and spark a new level of productivity, collaboration and communication.”

Microsoft’s commercial cloud revenue up by 30 percent

Posted on September 14, 2020 by - News

Software king of the world Microsoft appears to be doing better than Amazon and Google in the cloud stakes.

According to the research data analysed and published by StockApps.com, during the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2020 which ended on June 30, 2020, Microsoft had an increase of 30 percent in commercial cloud revenue.

While commercial cloud revenue totalled $14.3 billion, Intelligent Cloud revenue was $13.37 billion. This marked an increase of 17 percent year on year and surpassed analysts’ expectations of $13.11 billion according to FactSet. The Intelligent Cloud segment includes such products as Azure, Windows Server and GitHub among others. More Personal Computing, which includes Xbox and Surface, was up 14 percent. Productivity and Business Processes, whose products include Office and Dynamics, was up six per cent. Overall revenue increased 13 percent year on year to $38.0 billion.

Microsoft has new UK managing director for enterprise commercial business

Posted on September 8, 2020 by - News

Gavin Jackson has joined Microsoft as the vendor’s managing director for enterprise commercial business in the UK.

Jackson said: “I am excited to join Microsoft, whose cloud business has gone from strength to strength in the UK thanks to a reputation for putting customers first and supporting businesses on their digital transformation journeys.