A special Report from the editors of RCP
MSP’S Guide to
Getting Started with Azure
The opportunity around Microsoft Azure is huge, but the flagship public cloud offering with its
hundreds of services and unfamiliar architecture can be intimidating. Here are nine ways
managed services providers can get up and running with the Azure platform. By Scott Bekker
A
lot of the early action in the cloud for
managed services providers (MSPs) has
been around Software-as-a-Service (Saas)
applications like Office 365. But much
of the remaining upside—both for customers and
Microsoft partners—is on the infrastructure side with
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a
Service (PaaS).
The opportunity in IaaS and PaaS is in Microsoft Azure,
and even though Microsoft’s flagship public cloud offer-
ing has been around for eight years, it’s still relatively
early in the adoption cycle. In presentations, Microsoft
often points out that a large percentage of Fortune 500
companies are Azure customers. The reality is that many
of those deployments are pilots or departmental projects,
and among smaller enterprises, midmarket customers
and small and midsize businesses (SMBs), the existing
investments in Azure are even less. In other words, there’s
still time for partners to get involved.
At the same time, the level of interest in Azure among
customers is increasing now. “Over the past six to 12
months, it went from educating the marketplace, doing
a lot of proof-of-concepts, to people are now ready to
deploy,” says Chris Pyle, CEO of Boca Raton, Fla.-based
Champion Solutions Group.
A few MSPs have started to capitalize on the IaaS/
PaaS opportunity with Azure. While the Microsoft public
cloud technology stack with its dozens of unfamiliar
services, features and bundled suites can appear to have
a steep learning curve, it can actually be much quicker
and easier for MSPs to get started than it first appears.
Here are nine quick hits that MSPs can use both for
ramping up quick revenues and building expertise in
the public cloud.
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RCPmag.com May 2018 Redmond Channel Partner
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