Technology Record - Issue 22: Autumn 2021

44 www. t e c h n o l o g y r e c o r d . c om Partners obviously sit at the centre of this new role. Now that you’ve had an opportunity to lead your colleagues through this year’s Inspire, how do you view the partner ecosystem at large and where would you say the real value of partner solutions will come to the fore in this new financial year? At Microsoft, our partners have always been critical to our business, influencing more than 95 per cent of our commercial revenue. They are at the centre of how we deliver technologies and business transformation to customers, and we are constantly working to equip them with the most innovative technologies, tools and solu- tions in the industry to help them drive growth and profitability. As we look forward, there are four areas where I see the value of our partner solutions making a strong impact. The first is cloud migration. Partners have an unmatched opportunity to build and serve every customer need when it comes to the cloud, espe- cially given the remaining runway for migrat- ing workloads. From infrastructure to business applications, data and artificial intelligence (AI), productivity and communications, the opportu- nities are limitless. The second is security, compliance and iden- tity. When it comes to cybersecurity, the threat landscape has never been more complex or chal- lenging and is a growing concern for custom- ers. Partners have the opportunity to leverage Microsoft’s security and compliance offerings to help organisations extend protection to all data, devices, identities, platforms and clouds. Business applications is another area of value. With growing emphasis on hybrid work and improving the employee experience, Microsoft 365 will continue to see incredible growth. We are also seeing significant momentum with Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, as part- ners continue to help customers build apps and streamline workflows. Finally, industry solutions. Partners have depth on industries and are well positioned to lev- erage our platforms and tools to develop rich industry-specific solutions to meet customer needs. We see partners leveraging our industry E X E CUT I V E I NT E R V I EW