Westcoast plays host to cloud ambitions

Distributor grabs lucrative opportunity as it officially becomes a Microsoft cloud hosting partner

Westcoast has become a Microsoft cloud hosting distributor as it looks to grab a slice of the projected $219bn (£136bn) cloud solution market.

Under the Microsoft Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA), hosting providers and ISVs can license Microsoft products on a monthly basis to offer customers services and hosted applications.

The distributor has set up a dedicated team of hosting specialists that will field reseller queries and get them signed up as SPLA partners.

“SPLA licensing is a new and exciting opportunity for Westcoast. This new hosting solution looks to address specific business needs, increasing customer choice, offering hybrid on-premise and cloud environments, and scalable business growth," said Ben Feurtado, Microsoft business manager at Westcoast. "This means Westcoast can offer on-premise, public cloud and private cloud, making this a great opportunity for our existing Microsoft resellers to move into cloud services."

Paul Harman, solutions commercial manager at Westcoast, said: “All these offerings enable Westcoast and our resellers to sell the relevant product and then to decide, depending on the end-user's requirements, which licence type is best suited. We are really focused on our current Microsoft partners who have not ventured into offering cloud services and working with them and helping them on their own cloud journey. The addition of SPLA along with Office 365 and traditional Open licensing means we are in an ideal position to support our resellers.”

Clare Barclay, director of SMB at Microsoft UK, added: “We have seen incredibly strong growth in the cloud services market over the past five years and the SPLA hosting business in the UK is now worth over $100m. We believe the addition of distributors into the SPLA channel will drive new business and support VARs wanting to offer highly personalised cloud solutions to their customers.”