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M S P ’ s G u i d e t o G e t t i n g s t ar t e d w i t h a z u r e
Eduardo Kassner, CTO for Partner
Enablement & Innovation at Microsoft,
has a mantra for MSPs and partners
working with Azure: “Migrate, secure,
automate and op timize.”
1. Backing into Azure
There’s an easy way to back into the Azure business for
MSPs, and that’s to do something that many are doing
already: Work with a backup vendor to provide business
continuity and disaster recovery for customers. Many of the
backup vendors are using Azure in some fashion, either as
an off-site backup option as the prime off-site location, or as
the sole backup location for their service. That makes those
types of tools a great starting place for MSPs to get familiar
with the basics of Azure for cloud backup and recovery, busi-
ness continuity or Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS).
2. A new way to vdi
Another way to join hands with a vendor who does the heavy
lifting with Azure and presents the MSP with an abstracted,
purpose-built interface for a specific task is virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI). Pyle sums up the appeal of public
cloud for VDI in one word: “Bootstorm.”
The traditional way of creating VDI involved setting up a
lot of on-premises infrastructure to handle the huge load that
would hit the datacenter at 9 a.m. or so every morning as all of
a customer’s users logged on. “In the cloud, you can spread it
out,” Pyle says. Several vendors are creating offerings for putting
those users on Azure. As an MSP, you can leverage their work
for an immediate practice area while gaining expertise in Azure
at your own pace, or not at all.
3. mapping current skills to azure
Eventually, the idea is to have Azure experts on your own
staff who can creatively design solutions that bring business
value to customers. This is one of the most intimidating
areas for MSPs looking at Azure from the outside.
As the top Microsoft executive in charge of connecting partners
with opportunities around Azure, Eduardo Kassner, CTO of
Worldwide Channels and Programs, characterizes the effort
required to get people from their existing skillsets to Azure as closer
to baby steps than to giant steps.
“There’s a delta of what you know versus what you need to know
to get to the cloud, and it’s not huge,” Kassner says. The real currency
for MSPs is skills, he says, and most existing skills map pretty directly
to something critical in the Azure stack. “Networking concepts are
exactly the same, but they’re software-defined networking. A systems
administrator now would be a cloud architect. A data administrator
[goes from thinking] SAN and NAS to blobs, etc. With the desire to
evolve, we’ve seen many people do it.”
4. sign up for mpn
One of the quickest, easiest and in some ways surprisingly inex-
pensive ways to get people skilled up on Azure is by joining the
Microsoft Partner Network (MPN). Microsoft entices partners to
the higher, paid tiers with substantial benefits, but for partners
looking for Azure training, the free, base level of MPN has a ton
of resources.
Partners can find entire playbooks on building cloud practices,
technical training materials and massive open online courses (MOOCs).
5. IUR s
Getting familiar with any technology requires a sandbox for
playing around with it. One of the prime benefits of the higher,
paid tiers of the MPN is Internal Use Rights (IURs). A longtime
favorite benefit of Microsoft partners, IURs allow them to run
their businesses on the Microsoft software and services that they
sell to customers, such as Office 365, Dynamics 365, Windows 10
Enterprise and Windows Server. Included in the IURs are Azure
monthly credits, which amount to $100 worth of Azure usage per
month. Partners who earn the Cloud Platform or ISV competen-
cies qualify for $6,000 a year in Azure bulk credits at the silver
competency level, and $12,000 a year at the gold competency
level.
RCPmag.com May 2018 Redmond Channel Partner
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