4 ms·

This is all intentional. They’re basically killing off their reseller model in favor of self-service for small clients. When selling SKUs, a reseller model is

This is all intentional. They’re basically killing off their reseller model in favor of self-service for small clients. When selling SKUs, a reseller model is great. They do the hard work of finding and converting long-tail leads, and all you have to give up is a little margin. When selling cloud subscriptions it becomes a burden — you have to continually pay overhead for your partners to manage your customers. Customer support expectations are low in the cloud (AWS provides minimal support, so MS can too). Microsoft has been investing in customer-facing solution architects for this reason. They are investing dedicated resources in their big accounts, and are driving their partner strategy through the big consultancies rather than small MSPs. Their strategy seems to be one of landing a lot of “big fish;” which isn’t hard to do with a lot of big customers backtracking G-Suite to Office 365. From what I’ve seen, it’s working: Google simply doesn’t have the kind of relationships in the enterprise IT world that Microsoft does.

sascha_sl 7y ago
>Customer support expectations are low in the cloud (AWS provides minimal support, so MS can too). What. Last I checked anyone with any substantial cloud deployment pays at least the 7%-3% of the bill for AWS support tier. Which is excellent support usually.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  And Microsoft offers the same support for a similar fee — the big change here is that the support is offered directly to the customer rather than through a reseller. Further design / build support can be acquired through the big consultancies as consulting engagements. The big shift here is the customer now pays Microsoft directly rather than the reseller. They now own the customer relationship, which is everything in software sales.
  - busterarm 7y ago
    As an enterprise customer of all three major cloud providers at an 8-digit spend, I can tell you without flinching that AWS offers (at least) 10x the support that its competitors do and that was also true when the spend was 5 digits. Their sales is high-touch too.
    - wayoutthere 7y ago
      I mean, they basically invented the entire cloud platform model; so it stands to reason they’re way out in front. Microsoft is making headway, but a high-touch support model is so far outside Google’s DNA I don’t think they’re ever going to get it right.
lunchables 7y ago
>From what I’ve seen, it’s working: Google simply doesn’t have the kind of relationships in the enterprise IT world that Microsoft does. Is this anecdotal or is there some data on this? I'm kind of amazed how little attention G-Suite seems to get when there is such a huge gap in functionality between their office suite and Microsoft's. It seems like Google could be growing it by leaps and bounds if they wanted to.
- aksss 7y ago
  Is this sarcasm?
Someone1234 7y ago
And buying O365 via a vendor is actually a huge liability. The vendor/reseller has full admin access to your O365 account ("subscription advisor"/delegated administrators). They can also transfer this access. If your vendor gets purchased or otherwise decides to transfer your rep' they'll just unilaterally grant some unknown person/company admin access to your whole O365 account. But you're forced to work through a vendor for any discounts. You're penalized for working directly with Microsoft. And if you revoke this access, don't be surprised if your partner tells you they cannot support you until it is re-granted (even buying more licenses, because they need to "confirm your license allocation" or similar). It is a huge HIPAA nightmare.
- xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
  I'm surprised how infrequently this is brought up. Folks are either shocked or dismissive whenever I bring this up, but it keeps me from being able to recommend O365 at all.
  - aksss 7y ago
    Because the concern comes across as a bit silly if you know how the platform works and you have experience changing your partner ID (say, from acquisition). A customer must deliberately grant a partner delegated admin privs for them to have that level of access to their tenant. If the company the customer works with gets bought out, the buyer doesn’t get access to the acquired client tenants automagically. They must go through and request delegate admin again under the different partner ID that’s bound to their partner tenant. A client can swap out (or dump) partners of record quite easily, and other service providers are happy to help you do it. Years ago, if you bought O365 licensing through a reseller, it was very hard to add licenses yourself with direct purchase. That hasn’t been the case for a while now though. You can use redeemed licenses from a reseller alongside directly purchased licenses. We encourage our customers to buy direct anyway, although I don’t see anything in the article talking about shutting down the reseller program anyway. They’re dropping internal use rights and support incidents for partners.
    - 7y ago
cwyers 7y ago
Yeah, this is an Azure play. The reseller model worked when Microsoft didn't want to deal with the sales channel and so if you're in Austin you find a local Microsoft vendor to deal with everything. Now Microsoft wants to bring it all in house so that they can upsell everyone on Azure.

sascha_sl 7y ago

>Customer support expectations are low in the cloud (AWS provides minimal support, so MS can too). What. Last I checked anyone with any substantial cloud deployment pays at least the 7%-3% of the bill for AWS support tier. Which is excellent support usually.

wayoutthere 7y ago
And Microsoft offers the same support for a similar fee — the big change here is that the support is offered directly to the customer rather than through a reseller. Further design / build support can be acquired through the big consultancies as consulting engagements. The big shift here is the customer now pays Microsoft directly rather than the reseller. They now own the customer relationship, which is everything in software sales.
- busterarm 7y ago
  As an enterprise customer of all three major cloud providers at an 8-digit spend, I can tell you without flinching that AWS offers (at least) 10x the support that its competitors do and that was also true when the spend was 5 digits. Their sales is high-touch too.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    I mean, they basically invented the entire cloud platform model; so it stands to reason they’re way out in front. Microsoft is making headway, but a high-touch support model is so far outside Google’s DNA I don’t think they’re ever going to get it right.

lunchables 7y ago

>From what I’ve seen, it’s working: Google simply doesn’t have the kind of relationships in the enterprise IT world that Microsoft does. Is this anecdotal or is there some data on this? I'm kind of amazed how little attention G-Suite seems to get when there is such a huge gap in functionality between their office suite and Microsoft's. It seems like Google could be growing it by leaps and bounds if they wanted to.

aksss 7y ago
Is this sarcasm?

Someone1234 7y ago

And buying O365 via a vendor is actually a huge liability. The vendor/reseller has full admin access to your O365 account ("subscription advisor"/delegated administrators). They can also transfer this access. If your vendor gets purchased or otherwise decides to transfer your rep' they'll just unilaterally grant some unknown person/company admin access to your whole O365 account. But you're forced to work through a vendor for any discounts. You're penalized for working directly with Microsoft. And if you revoke this access, don't be surprised if your partner tells you they cannot support you until it is re-granted (even buying more licenses, because they need to "confirm your license allocation" or similar). It is a huge HIPAA nightmare.

xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
I'm surprised how infrequently this is brought up. Folks are either shocked or dismissive whenever I bring this up, but it keeps me from being able to recommend O365 at all.
- aksss 7y ago
  Because the concern comes across as a bit silly if you know how the platform works and you have experience changing your partner ID (say, from acquisition). A customer must deliberately grant a partner delegated admin privs for them to have that level of access to their tenant. If the company the customer works with gets bought out, the buyer doesn’t get access to the acquired client tenants automagically. They must go through and request delegate admin again under the different partner ID that’s bound to their partner tenant. A client can swap out (or dump) partners of record quite easily, and other service providers are happy to help you do it. Years ago, if you bought O365 licensing through a reseller, it was very hard to add licenses yourself with direct purchase. That hasn’t been the case for a while now though. You can use redeemed licenses from a reseller alongside directly purchased licenses. We encourage our customers to buy direct anyway, although I don’t see anything in the article talking about shutting down the reseller program anyway. They’re dropping internal use rights and support incidents for partners.
  - 7y ago

cwyers 7y ago

Yeah, this is an Azure play. The reseller model worked when Microsoft didn't want to deal with the sales channel and so if you're in Austin you find a local Microsoft vendor to deal with everything. Now Microsoft wants to bring it all in house so that they can upsell everyone on Azure.