Caspar Herzberg |
This article was originally published in the Summer 2018 issue of The Record.
Companies of every size and from every part of the planet are rapidly adopting cloud-based solutions, so they can capitalise on the benefits and the advancements of new technologies that are now easily available, such as internet of things and artificial intelligence. Cloud adoption rates are rising rapidly, so technology distributors and their resellers are facing both significant opportunities and major operational challenges. Those who successfully adapt to the new software delivery landscape will grow their business, but those who fail to adapt may lose business.
Distributors in the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) programme are facing increasing demand for plans for Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Azure and several other carefully selected cloud services from their third-party vendors. To successfully deliver these plans, distributors need to provide their resellers with easy-to-use technology and automated services that will enable them to buy and manage cloud services on behalf of their customers. This technology should also be able to help resellers send accurate bills for subscriptions and enable them to publish their own branded marketplaces that consist of a mix of cloud solutions and other services and products.
To address this need, the interworks.cloud platform combines the flexibility of a complete cloud management platform with the power of a Microsoft CSP automation solution. It includes a customisable marketplace, an automated provisioning engine, a powerful billing engine, modules for customer relationship management, business reporting, resellers management, notifications and more. As a Microsoft CSP automation solution, the interworks.cloud platform also offers special tools designed to relieve many of the day-to-day issues faced by CSP partners. These include automated Microsoft Catalogue update, automated subscriptions reconciliation, Microsoft Azure consumption forecasting against customers’ credit limit, subscription price protection, connection to multiple Microsoft Partner Centre accounts and more.
Best of all, the interworks.cloud platform makes it easy for distributors to deliver all of these services and capabilities to multiple resellers and their end customers in multiple geographies in roughly five minutes. This means interworks.cloud puts distributors far ahead of their competition and at the heart of the new business-as-a-service ecosystem.
Stamatis Barbounakis is vice president of sales at interworks.cloud