In Cloud Era, Some Microsoft Partners in Danger of Being 'Lost in Space' Says Microsoft Exec

As Microsoft's cloud offerings have advanced in recent years, many partners have taken steps to evolve the organization of their teams and how they go to market. But there remains a portion of the channel, including for Dynamics ERP products, that still relies on the traditional on-premise delivery model. For those who have resisted change until now, time may be running out to catch up with those who have already made the transition.

"Some partners are born in the cloud and have been building business models [there]," said Jean-Phillipe Courtois, president of Microsoft International, speaking to members of the press at Convergence 2015 EMEA this week. These cloud-native partners work with Microsoft and other major cloud providers and are growing "incredibly fast," he said. Similarly, many older partner organizations have reinvented themselves by adopting a cloud model through new business units or subsidiaries with a completely different agenda.

But then there is a remaining segment of partners that are "lost in space," Courtois said. "[There are] traditional vendors - not just for Microsoft that still don't get it. I've been telling them all together and one by one that their time is over and I can see it. A number are struggling today to be relevant and they can only can maintain their business for so long as a Dynamics partner or as a system integration partner doing [on-premise] and infrastructure projects."

For Dynamics ERP partners, the choices around cloud delivery have been emerging for some time. Customers have had the option to offload data center needs to a hosting partner's data center, and later to the public ...