Microsoft: Cloud partners grow twice as fast as non-cloud firms

Microsoft and IDC release latest batch of cloudy research

Microsoft has said its cloud-focused partners grow at double the rate of non-cloud resellers and enjoy one and a half times more gross profit.

The findings form the basis of a joint Microsoft and IDC research paper, The Booming Cloud Opportunity, which was released today.

In the paper, Microsoft claims that "greater cloud spending" - including SaaS, PaaS and IaaS, plus professional and managed services around private and public cloud - will exceed $500bn (£350bn) by 2020; more than three times today's figure.

The vendor has been pushing its cloud solutions considerably in the past few years, and talking up the merits of its born-in-the-cloud partners - those which specialise in cloud services.

It said its cloud partners - those which make more than half of their revenue from cloud - enjoy double the growth rate of non-cloud resellers, and one and a half times more gross profit.

"It's clear that those with more than 50 per cent revenue [from cloud] are in a league of their own," the study said.

"Over the past five years, IDC research has repeatedly shown that cloud partners demonstrate better business performance than those earning less than half of their revenue from cloud. Our 2016 study of 750 IT solution providers is no different. Cloud partners continue to outperform their peers.

"We note, though, these strong business performance results are not solely attributable to the cloud, although our research shows a positive effect from cloud. Partners led by a strong management team tend to see critical trends in the industry first, whether it was virtualisation, or even client-server computing some time ago. They made the commitment to cloud early, and they are benefiting from their early adoption."