{"id":13134,"date":"2012-07-09T20:17:39","date_gmt":"2012-07-09T19:17:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=13134"},"modified":"2012-07-09T20:17:39","modified_gmt":"2012-07-09T19:17:39","slug":"office-365-open-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=13134","title":{"rendered":"Office 365 Open Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft Partners have not been quiet about some of their displeasure with Office 365.\u00a0 O365 committed a cardinal sin in business; in the eyes of some partners, Microsoft stole the business relationship with the customer from the partner by direct invoicing the customer.\u00a0 In some parts of New Jersey, that\u2019d get you swimming with the fishes, capiche?<\/p>\n

I work with Microsoft partners.\u00a0 I have had more than a few tell me that they wouldn\u2019t bring Microsoft in on a meeting because of the Office 365 and cloud first strategy that would be pitched, attempting to \u201csteal\u201d that relationship.\u00a0 To be honest, I felt their pain.\u00a0 He who owns the invoice, owns the customer\u2019s business.\u00a0 And therefore, many partners continued to steer the customer away from Microsoft\u2019s public cloud services.\u00a0 Remember, in this world, the MSFT partner is <\/em>the IT department, they are the trusted advisor, they are the ones presenting the viable solutions and discrediting the \u201cbad ones\u201d.\u00a0 You have to bring the partner on board to have a hope of getting Office 365 to be the norm in this space.<\/p>\n

Throw in the disquiet about the disappearance of SBS (with on premises Exchange\/SharePoint) as a product, left with Windows Server 2012 Essentials (designed to work with Office 365), and the MSFT partner working in the SME space was left like they were not loved.<\/p>\n

And what do you get?\u00a0 Angry partners who saw Microsoft as competing with them.\u00a0 That was never going to win for Microsoft.<\/p>\n

Microsoft had to change.<\/p>\n

And today they announced Office 365 Open Program.<\/p>\n

Key points of this new partner friendly program are:<\/p>\n