eSP - IT Solution Providers in Europe

Microsoft Goes to War on Cloud Effort

Microsoft creates a new division, putting all of its SMB resources in a single multibillion dollar division to convince SMB solution providers that it’s time to be leading with cloud services like Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), the new Windows InTune systems management software/service and the Azure cloud platform.

Microsoft’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference kicks off with the company’s loudest message that "Microsoft partners need to be “All In” with the cloud, just like Redmond itself."

Founded in 1975 with a £2500 investment by Sir Peter Rigby, SCC has grown into Europe's largest independent reseller.

Below is a link to a video of an interview with Sir Peter Rigby, on stage with our own Editor-in-Chief, Bob Snyder.

"I think there are many service-led opportunities. In some respects, I wonder why a small-medium enterprise, or even a middle-sized enterprise wants to have it's own IT function. Why bother? They're not going to keep up to date with these things."

"They're just basically maintaining things. It's very expensive for them, they can't find the staff half the time, they can't react fast enough... why not give it to someone like us to do something with?"

Go Cloud Computing and Sir Peter Rigby

When an industry speaker dropped out of Channel Focus and Bob Snyder was asked to step in at the last minute. The only problem was that the topic was "Cloud Computing and the Channel."

As an industry we can't even agree on a definition. We either love the concept or hate it. And we haven't yet figured out how to sell it into the channel (let alone achieve sales-through).

See how Bob tackles the problem of addressing 100 Tier 1 channel managers on the topic They Love to Hate.

Go Clouds from Both Sides Now

Capgemini creates a new business unit to focus on cloud while not "polluting" its traditional systems integration business.

Capgemini says it is seeing "real demand" from its customers around the world for cloud computing and services now that the company has experience in the area.

The company is increasingly assembling lots of different software-as-a-service applications (for example, for a very large blue-chip firm in UK they just assembled 16 different SaaS solutions to provide the overall shop window.)

David Boulter is the VP of Capgemini's new Infostructure Transformation Services. (Capgemini may be clever at integration, but they clearly need a wordsmith to hone their ability to name what they do for a living.)

The Infostructure Transformation Services will help companies move to the cloud, optimizing and consolidating data centers, implementing virtualization and grabbing cloud services -- in either public or private clouds, or a mix of the two.

Go Cloud with Capgemini