Westcoast brings Microsoft monthly billing to masses

Distributor announces inclusion in Microsoft's Cloud Solution Provider scheme

Westcoast is the first UK distributor out of the gate on a new Microsoft scheme enabling resellers to directly provision and provide monthly billing for Office 365, Intune and other services.

The distributor has been appointed as a tier-two partner for Microsoft's Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) programme, which the vendor unveiled at its Worldwide Partner Conference last July.

Microsoft has already taken on a handful of direct, tier-one UK CSP partners, including Outsourcery, whose share price shot up 60 per cent in the wake of its announcement about the partnership in November. Softcat and Phoenix IT Group also made the grade.

But the programme will now be accessible to the broader channel as Microsoft begins to enlist tier-two distributors, with Westcoast appearing to be the first to formally announce.

"Over the coming months, resellers will see a range of different services and support options from Westcoast that are specifically designed for channel resellers to rebrand, add to and resell," Tatham said.

Under the scheme, partners can directly provision customer subscriptions and provide one monthly bill for both Microsoft services and their own.

"Our job is to support Office 365 and any other product we choose, offering a platform on which we can provision a whole range of products, for resellers to then rebill to their customers," said Tatham.

Westcoast said it is working with platform provider Ensim to deliver Microsoft's applications and services via the CSP scheme. It will initially engage with a small "user group" of resellers so it can fine-tune its transactional capabilities, Tatham said.