Channel pros are enrolling in Microsoft‘s Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program at a rapid clip and diversifying beyond sales of Office 365, according to Gavriella Schuster, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Group.
At present, more than 20,000 Microsoft cloud resellers transact business through CSP, Schuster reported during a 2016 “state of the channel” media appearance today. That’s up from 3,500 a year ago.
“We have seen ongoing and continuing momentum and we’re very excited about that,” Schuster said of CSP.
Schuster pointed to an 86 percent year-over-year spike in the number of Microsoft partners with gold- or silver-level cloud computing competencies as further evidence of its cloud-related success.
“Our partners are recognizing the opportunity the cloud can provide,” she said.
Those partners are increasingly selling and supporting more than just Office 365 too. Though that product remains Microsoft’s most popular cloud offering within the channel and among end users, the number of partners with three or more cloud competencies grew 53 percent in the past year.
“We see many of our partners moving to multi-cloud specialization,” Schuster said.
The CSP program, which grants partners exclusive control over client relationships by allowing them to provision and bill for cloud services themselves, debuted in 2014. Microsoft has been prodding partners to become members ever since, first by reducing the margins it paid resellers in its Online Services Advisor (OSA) program and more recently by phasing out OSA commissions altogether.
Customers of OSA members buy cloud licenses directly from Microsoft, and receive invoices and technical support from Microsoft as well. In the past, partners received a portion of the client’s subscription fees, but Microsoft cancelled that practice for new cloud licenses in October and will stop paying commissions for existing cloud seats as well starting July 1st of next year.
Schuster didn’t specify whether CSP signups have accelerated since OSA commissions began disappearing two months ago. That change has had “a direct and positive effect” on enrollments in Ingram Micro Inc.‘s cloud referral program, however, according to Jason Bystrak, executive director for Irvine, Calif.-based distributor Ingram Micro Cloud for the Americas.
Introduced in April, that offering works much like OSA, in that Ingram Micro takes on billing and support duties for partners and shares a percentage of client subscription payments with them. There are roughly “a couple hundred” resellers participating in the referral program at present, according to Bystrak, 90 percent of whom were motivated to register by the termination of OSA commissions.
It helps as well, Bystrak adds, that Ingram Micro pays referral partners 14 percent margins, versus the 3 percent commissions that OSA members received.
