What do you need from an indirect CSP Partner?

First of all: what is CSP Indirect?

Simply put this is where you, our customers become our partners. We provide you with the tools, systems and processes to help you sell Microsoft cloud solutions to your clients.

Microsoft created CSP partners to help strengthen the relationship between the customer and the software provider, allowing for Intellectual Property (IP) acceleration, finding new routes to market, automated billing and provisioning agility. The main purpose of CSP indirect is to make it simpler for customers to purchase the solutions and services they need via a long-term relationship with a vendor they can trust. CSP Indirect Providers need to commit to providing high quality support and service because they’ve taken on the responsibility for owning the relationship with you, the customer.

An indirect Microsoft cloud-services distribution relationship with SoftwareOne enables you to capture healthy margins without the burden of paying the annual fee on an Advanced Support agreement. When looking for a distribution partner for Microsoft cloud-services delivery, make sure you ask the following questions:

Do you get 24/7 support and a reliable team to support you every step of the way?

Your CSP tier 2 provider should provide you with a simpler route and shorter time to market, as well as the peace of mind of 24/7 customer support. A dedicated account manager who can help speed up your onboarding, help you define business objectives, advise, guide and educate you on how to earn incentives back from Microsoft and ensure you meet key goals seamlessly.

How automated are their billing and transactions?

A lot of CSP indirect providers cut corners here by not investing in automation. The financial impact from manual billing and transaction errors can be huge. Look for a partner program that features customized partner portals and automated billing structures to simplify these tasks. We ensure your clients are not surprised by any cloud invoices at the end of the month through our budgeting and alerting notifications.

The Right Answer: SoftwareOne has over 30 years of Microsoft experience, presence in over 80 countries, expertise on over 10,000 publishers, has generated over $5B of revenue with Microsoft and has created the ONEClub to provide a digital marketplace to manage and automate your CSP transactions* (see graphic below).

SoftwareOne’s CSP Indirect program can simplify how you go to market with the infrastructure we already have in place. We arm you with infrastructure, licensing expertise, our portfolio of “Simple” offerings and the cloud management analytics needed to properly manage your clients.

What’s their unique selling point and value added service?

A Microsoft CSP Partner must do more than just resell Azure to earn your trust. Do you know why you should partner with one indirect provider over another? If you don’t know the value they offer, then why partner with them? SoftwareOne is a service provider with added value beyond our licensing expertise. We’ve built up a formidable cloud expertise with managing cloud spend, securing and backing up your data in the cloud, managing your software in the cloud in our xSimple portfolio with AzureSimple , SAMSimple , 365Simple , UCSimple  and BackupSimple,  and PyraCloud  our Cloud Spend Manager is unique for managing your cloud consumption, tagging and analytics.

The Right Answer: Read “6 Reasons to Leverage the CSP Indirect Program with SoftwareOne” where we clearly lay out our value proposition. As an ISV, VAR, SI, MSP or hosting partner your CSP partner should simplify your entry into cloud, deliver you a shorter time to market through back-office automation and open new sources of revenue.

At Microsoft Inspire 2018 SoftwareOne’s Neil Lomax co-hosted a panel discussion with Devesh Satyavolu, Microsoft’s Director of Revenue and Growth WW OCP. His message was clear: