Office 365 hits snag in Australia

Microsoft has revealed that the Microsoft Online Portal for the sale of Office 365 won't be available for resellers by the anticipated launch date on 2 April.

At the time of writing, there was no publicly available launch date for the portal, with a Microsoft blog post stating more information will be available "in coming weeks".

Microsoft delayed the launch of the portal because "We want the online purchasing experience, via the portal, to be a great one and we are not currently satisfied that this is the case."

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According to the blog post, by Microsoft Australia Office division lead Steven Miller, "We have more work to do and will not be making the portal available until we are satisfied that the purchasing experience is a seamless and smooth one."

Microsoft said this would not affect its other two channels for Office 365: Open Licensing and Electronic Software Delivery (ESD).

Office 365 Open and ESD are due to launch this week, with most pricing now firmed up, according to distributor Synnex.

Synnex product director Darren Tan said: "In first week of March, we shared tentative pricing [for the Open licence]; this week that pricing is set and locked in."

He added that Synnex expected to see pricing for ESD tomorrow.

Synnex also revealed it was partnering with SkyKick, an application aimed to help resellers migrate customers to Office 365.

Partners and the portal

One partner who was disappointed by news of the portal delay was Nick Beaugeard, founder of HubOne.

"That was going to be our primary method of offering Office 365 because we deal with an awful lot of smaller customers. We are quite disappointed about that, but we understand."

One advantage of offering Office 365 via the Portal is the ability to offer a monthly billing cycle, versus annual billing for the Open license. While Beaugeard said HubOne would also offer the Open license, he said he hadn’t seen a lot of demand from HubOne's customer base for annual billing.

"We are absolutely planning to go ahead for 2 April," said Beaugeard.

Loryan Strant from Paradyne was not concerned about the delay. "The portal is generally for customers who want to go direct and don't want a partner. Generally if we're going to get a customer they'll be going via Telstra or Open. The fact it is not available via a Portal doesn’t concern us in the slightest.

"We've already got some quotes out for customers for Office 365 Open. We've definitely got a few opportunities out there."

Resellers previously spoken to by CRN indicated strong interest in Office 365, with one saying they expected the product to "sell like hotcakes." At the time, Ingram told CRN there was pent-up demand for the product.

Major distributors have planned various activities around the April 2 launch, including Synnex, which has been advertising a trip to Brazil for the World Cup for its top three partners.