How disties will battle for Office 365 dominance

Microsoft's three Office 365 distribution partners have revealed their plans to take the SaaS suite out to market.

Office 365 Open licensing will come into effect on 2 April, marking not only the first time most resellers will be able to sell the tools without Telstra, but also the first opportunities for the disties to get behind it.

All three disties are vying to win the hearts and minds of the channel with tempting offers.

Synnex is offering the top three partners selling Office 365 in April an all expenses paid trip to Brazil for the World Cup and Rio exploration tour.

The distie told CRN it would offer Office 365 via Open Licence, Open Value, and Open Value Subscription programs. It will also offer Office 365 Small Business Premium via electronic software delivery (ESD).

The distie is encouraging all partners to sign up for Microsoft’s Cloud Champion program. "Microsoft’s Cloud Champion program is a 12-week program that will equip you with all the skills you need to be successful," according to the company.

Express Data, which just this week was acquired by Dicker Data, said it wants to "demystify and simplify the Microsoft Cloud offerings for our partners".

"ED’s offering for Office 365 is more than a simple SKU on our pricelist available to our Microsoft Open partners. We have reviewed the challenges and wins the partners in other regions selling Open O365 have encountered and designed an offering that supports these key requirements," according to the company.

The distie is running partner training and education through roadshows in each major capital city starting this month. Its technical boot camps have already started.

Express Data is also offering phone support "for everything O365", such as licensing, quoting, solutions and services.

"ED services are available to add skills or resources that resellers don’t have in house or to supplement their in-house skills."

Ingram Micro is going all out in terms of its education program. Initiatives running over the next few months will include Office 365 demonstration and deployment workshops, including "regional and online partner enablement".

Ingram's Office 365 Licensing Academy aims "to help resellers build their licensing business. This program will focus specifically on Office 365."

Ingram is running a dedicated Office 365 pre-sales desk to help with Office 365 enquiries.

Lee Welch, Ingram Micro’s senior business manager enterprise software and cloud services, said: "Our partners have been inundating us with requests for Office 365 but until now we haven’t been able to meet this pent up demand.

"Office 365 is a world-class product and the fact we have been distributing it elsewhere around the world means we have a wealth of experience that we can bring to the Australian market. We are really excited about the opportunities that lie ahead to unleash the full potential of Office 365 here in Australia."

With all this information on distribution plans, there is still one huge piece of missing information – the price.

Dean Swan, Microsoft Australia's director of Partner Strategy, Programs and Industry, told CRN last week that pricing would be revealed 30 days prior to general availability.

The vendor is running a 12-week Cloud Champion coaching program to help resellers develop their cloud-based business and leverage Office 365.