FD Insights Issue 4 | Page 42

2013

The 2013 Microsoft
Hosting Summit

The Microsoft Hosting Summit is an annual event held in Seattle, USA which provides an opportunity
for leaders across the industry to connect and share ideas on how to expand and build new services,
drive innovation, and create new business opportunities within the hosting industry.
We take a look at some of the major points which emerged from this conference.

T

he theme for this year’s event was Changing the
Game which in this instance refers to leveraging the
massive scale of the cloud and the ability to meet
unique customer requirements. Keynotes and breakout
sessions from the event focussed on identifying both the
immediate and future opportunities for hosting partners to
accelerate their growth.
The goal was to ensure that Microsoft’s hosting partners
were bringing innovative thinking to the services they provide, and areas of focus included:
Building platforms that provide the ability to scale
-
and automate the provisioning of the resources required
to move existing applications, in addition to developing
next-generation applications designed for the cloud.
-
Gaining new customers by leveraging Microsoft
and partners’ combined ability to deliver the cloud’s benefits
across the variety of models.
Eugene Saburi, General Manager of Server & Tools Hosting
for Microsoft mentioned that a disruptive technology shift
such as cloud computing typically causes a lot of churn in
the marketplace, and that there are great economic benefits
for customers and plenty of opportunities for vendors who
are agile enough to embrace the transition in a thoughtful
way. He added that at Microsoft, this transition sets the underpinnings for their Cloud OS initiative, where customers
have the flexibility to deploy their infrastructure and applications in the location that best suits their needs – be it their
own datacentre, Windows Azure or in a hosted datacentre
– and simply have it all work together.
Eugene also added that with over 20 000 partners and a
business growing four times faster than their on-premises
business, the hosting business, and more specifically the
partners who deliver those solutions, are an indispensable
part of Microsoft’s strategy in the Server & Tools group.

©2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

40 | www.firstdistribution.co.za

Microsoft also recently commissioned research titled The
New Era of Hosted Services. The study highlights big opportunities for hosting partners in the next two years in the
areas of customers, cloud, and applications.
Key findings include:
Cloud: The new cloud opportunity for hosting service providers is to help customers leverage the cloud to grow their
business. This is a change from previous years, when cloud
was largely seen as a cost-cutting measure. According to
the survey, more than 52 percent of organisations identify
the cloud as beneficial for either growing their business or
realigning their organisation to a new company strategy.
Customers: The next two years will represent the era of
hybrid cloud – defined as the interoperability of private and
public cloud – as customers look to this consumption model
to facilitate growth. Research indicates that 68 percent of
customers plan to adopt hybrid cloud models in the next
two years; up from 49 percent today.
Applications: Software is sticky, and brand is important.
The survey revealed that two-thirds of software-as-a-service customers use software online that they had previously
installed on-premises. This highlights a significant opportunity for hosting service provider partners to offer customers
Microsoft software that they trust in a cloud environment.
Judging from the positive statistics quoted throughout the
event and the enthusiasm with which strategic managers
wholeheartedly endorsed it, Microsoft clearly believes that
placing the cloud at the centre of business IT is changing
the opportunities for Microsoft hosting partners to provide
cloud services and
solutions.