I grew up in a small town in Macon, Georgia as the son of an import/export business owner. My dad came to this country with very little money in his pocket.  However, he had big dreams, friends all across the world, and the ability to help local farmers expand their global footprint. A new deal, negotiation or contract always needed to be handled.

Recently, a few changes were implemented in StreamOne, Tech Data’s cloud marketplace, to improve your shopping experience. To make searching easier and more efficient, we have added a search box to the product. Now you can search within product listings by product name, category or keyword with enhanced page performance and responsiveness.

Whether it’s exposure to years of messaging from companies like Microsoft or the appeal of easy access to data, better security and disaster recovery—or a combination of both—one thing is certain: your clients are moving their apps to the cloud.

A little over a year ago, Microsoft released its cloud version of Dynamics Customer Relationship Management (Dynamics CRM)—CRM Online (CRMOL)—to the IT channel. CRMOL is expected to be the CRM solution for all SMB customers. Since the on-premise version is a highly specialized niche offering, Microsoft released the “lite” version of its Dynamic product in the hopes of making the sale, implementation and marketing of CRM easier for its channel partners. Tech Data’s Microsoft marketing team has run several campaigns to encourage partners to sell CRMOL, and we have heard many reasons why customers believe they can’t sell the product.

You may have noticed a tremendous amount of disruption in the Microsoft Office 365 space recently.  There are many ways to purchase Microsoft Office 365 (Open program, Advisor, and now CSP) and no real direction on the best partner and program to choose. But who can help you maximize your profit and margin?  Directing your customers to purchase direct through the Advisor program is not the preferred method for a per user/per month billing option, as you earn less money and have no control over the billing. If you’re an MSP selling in this space, you should be working with a Tier 2 Microsoft CSP Partner. Here are the top five things to look for from your Tier 2 Microsoft CSP distribution partner:

Microsoft Office 365, while extremely efficient in delivering on its purpose as a productivity suite, is but a single piece of a cloud solution puzzle.  Microsoft O365 becomes exceptional when a managed service provider (MSP) combines Microsoft O365 with other puzzle pieces to profitably deliver on the promise of the cloud.

In the brief video below, I’ll provide some information around what co-location services can offer our partners and their customers - and how they can take advantage of the unique opportunities found in offering those services.

It seems like everyone is offering cloud services of every flavor these days, with new players joining the market every day. Over the past 10 years, we’ve seen cloud-based storage, email migration; remote monitoring, online productivity, and cloud security take center stage. Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are trusted with securing organizations’ networks. However, many do not fully understand their own customers' priorities when it comes to security.

The cloud has brought about some of the most transformational changes in IT distribution since the dot-com boom, and the most challenging part of it might just be sorting out all of the new acronyms. SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS have turned VAR’s into SP’s, MSP’s and CSP’s, many of which run their businesses on RMM’s and PSA’s. It’s all very overwhelming, and worse yet, new ones are coined every day and everyone seems to have different definitions. In fact, the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) is mysterious enough that Wikipedia doesn’t even have an entry. Seriously!? There is an article on UFO abduction insurance, but nothing about CSP’s. But I digress…

Service level agreements existed long before the term “cloud computing” was coined. We’ve grown accustomed to thinking of SLAs as a critical component in our relationship with service providers and customers. They give detail to the service offering bullet points, set our expectations, and should protect both provider and customer. But as cloud computing becomes more pervasive and the features of cloud services flourish, are SLAs as important in cloud computing as we think?

It’s Security Week at Tech Data. Throughout the week please look for a post related to security trends, concerns and programs to help you ensure your customers are secure.