Microsoft exec to partners: Adapt your business model or die

Cloud services partner lead advises partners to learn from vendor's own mistakes in being slow to innovate

If partners don't redesign their business models to reflect the current changes in the channel they face the danger of failure, according to a Microsoft exec.

James Chadwick, Microsoft's cloud services partner lead, told the audience at Ingram Micro's Cloud UK Summit in London that the vendor's own history shows partners the importance of constant innovation.

"Business models are changing rapidly - if you're not adapting your business model, you're in danger of going out of business," he warned the crowd.

"About six years ago, it felt like Microsoft was a middle-aged company and suddenly the competitors we had always been competing with [had changed].

"Suddenly we were selling against a search company around productivity and we kind of had a little bit of a wobble."

Changing customer behaviour plays a large part in what shape a partner should remodel its business, Chadwick added.

Using the example of Microsoft's Enterprise Agreement (EA), he acknowledged that it is a 35-year-old model with some aspects that are considered out-of-step with the requirements of today's customers.

"Whatever happens with the EA we will try and sell everything we can to a customer, but we know that customers want to buy what they want to buy," he said.

"They want to buy services, they don't want to buy complex IT systems that take X months or years to roll out and by the time it's fully rolled out they won't realise the value. And then we'll probably come knocking, trying to sell the latest version of that product.

"The world has changed and suddenly we are talking about different things."

Chadwick told the audience that constant innovation is a priority for the tech giant, using the addition of Microsoft Teams to the Office 365 platform as an example.

"Office 365 is a great product but we have to innovate," he stated.

"My team struggled with Teams when we first started using it, but now the sharing of documents and resources happens so much more effectively across our business.

"We need to continuously innovate these products so we can maximise the opportunity in the market. "

"Change is insistent and we are all part of that so think about adopting the right technology to address these challenges.

"Cloud is a huge opportunity. It is hard, but it has never been better so I implore partners to think about their organisations and how to best take advantage of the opportunity."