What Canadian partners need to know.
Microsoft Inspire 2021 continued for an extra day with Canadian-specific sessions on Monday, July 19! The Pax8 Microsoft team in Canada tuned in to catch all the highlights and break them down for you. Below are some of our top takeaways from the Microsoft Inspire Canadian Sessions, including product announcements, news, and industry thought leadership.
Inspire Canada Session
In this July 15 session during the main Inspire conference, Microsoft Corporate VP of Global Partner Solutions, Nick Parker, shared how focused they are on making it easier to do business with Microsoft as the opportunity in Canada continues to expand. He shared that:
– Microsoft Canada holds the #1 cloud market share position
– Microsoft continues to focus on tech intensity and investing in the partner ecosystem
– The Canadian market continues to see excellent growth across all partner paths
Azure Canada Priorities
The market opportunity for cloud is growing enormously in Canada to support a second wave of digital transformation. Linux is the fastest-growing platform on Azure and opportunities in SQL continue to increase. Partners should pursue advanced specializations to validate your Azure expertise and differentiate your business competitively.
Indirect Providers Unplugged
Canadian SMBs are expected to continue to advance their cloud maturity and invest in cloud, with a huge growth opportunity for cloud seats. Top challenges for SMBs include cost unpredictability and a need for better user experience and implementation ease in applications – keep this in mind as you position modern work solutions, Azure, and Dynamics.
ISV Partner Strategy Unplugged
ISVs are a core part of Microsoft’s strategy to better serve client needs. That’s why Microsoft is investing in incentives and partner enablement, including co-sell programs, to further motivate synergy between ISVs and partners.
Meeting Customer Expectations with Dynamics 365
Service leaders across industries such as professional services, government, retail, and banking are increasingly facing challenges around meeting customer needs while managing hybrid workforces, providing multi-channel customer support, and dealing with aging legacy systems with siloed data.
Top planned technology investments include workflow automation, AI, customer analytics, and telephony. Dynamics can help solve these issues to provide a more efficient, consistent customer experience with integrated data and analytics.
Overall Takeaways for Canadian Partners
The general messaging for Canadian partners echoed the global story Microsoft told throughout the main Inspire conference: as a company, Microsoft is focused on investing in partner enablement, incentivizing their ISV partner strategy, supporting the future of hybrid work, building resilience in the partner ecosystem, and generally making it easier to do business with Microsoft.
The global cloud opportunity is huge – worldwide, over 70% of the market is untapped for digital transformation.
Growing Our Canadian Microsoft Presence
We hope you enjoyed all of our Microsoft Inspire coverage – make sure to check out our event Q&A video recap as well as our Day 1 and Day 2 recap blogs.
Pax8 has been continuing to grow our Microsoft team in Canada so that we can provide the same award-winning Microsoft experience to our partners’ in Canada that we offer stateside. We’d love to talk about how we can support you along your Microsoft journey – reach out by scheduling call below!
