Exchange and Outlook tempt users to cloud

Following its recent ‘The Future of Cloud’ event which attracted around 180 partners to London just before Christmas, Adam Cathcart, head of partner management at Outsourcery has outlined key parts of the cloud service provider’s strategy for 2012.

Outsourcery, a Microsoft-focused provider, has been ramping up its sales over the past year. Cathcart (pictured) is betting that Outlook will be the key focus point for seamless integration: “We find [Microsoft] Exchange is one of the first applications that customers look at when they enter the cloud. For 95 percent of business, the first thing they do is fire up Outlook ...with the emergence of Lync, this is growing.”

In his view, having a consistent, well-understood and user-friendly interface like Outlook as the front end to other Microsoft cloud ready applications like ERP, CRM, UC and Collaboration will be a key focus for the firm.

Cathcart confirms that its sales pipeline for the rebadged and upgraded Microsoft Office Communicator Server is around five times greater than the last version. He believes that customers delayed implementations waiting for Lync, and now the firm is benefiting from that pent-up demand.

Naturally the firm is extremely pro-Microsoft and Cathcart believes that products like Lync are “sexy”. Although, more importantly, it is Microsoft licensing mobility which allows customers to swap between on-premise and cloud without a cost hike, which he believes is extremely progressive and, in part, fuelling growth.

The firm has recruited between 40 to 50 new partners over the last four months, and “many of the new partners often come to us with a couple of opportunities,” says Cathcart, who adds Outsourcery now has 253 active channel partners on its books and is still expanding.

According to Cathcart. “A lot of partners are generally dealing with just one cloud provider at the moment.” He reckons many are still in the early stages of moving to the cloud and often approach a cloud provider after losing an on-premise deal to a rival with a cloud offering. “They will come to us with a [specific] requirement and we sell it.”

Even in the growing cloud service provider community, there is still the 80/20 rule according to the channel boss. The firm went through a tiering exercise last year to break up its channel into four groups with strategic partners like Micro-P and PSG followed by Premier partners including Calyx and other firms with a focused cloud strategy and supporting resource.

The firm still has a direct touch element of around 10 sales people concentrating on specific products and larger corporate accounts. The firm is currently 70 percent indirect but is planning to moving to the high nineties over 2012.