News Round-up: Office 365 sales training webcasts, Azure updates

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Every month, we round up hosting and cloud service provider news you might have missed. Sign up for our monthly Microsoft Hosting and Cloud Newsletter to get the most current news delivered to your inbox.  

Join us at Microsoft Inspire

inspireConnect with partners, Microsoft employees and industry experts at Microsoft Inspire (July 9–13, 2017 in Washington, D.C.). With past attendance exceeding 16,000 people from around the globe, Microsoft Inspire provides a week full of networking, learning and collaboration.

The Microsoft Managed Service Provider team will be there in full force, with 11 breakout sessions. We also will be featured in a General Session on Tuesday, July 11th. Sign up to stay in the loop on our plans.

Webcasts @ Cloud Channel Network 

Browse on-demand webcasts by topic, and quickly register for upcoming sessions. View the entire webcast catalog at www.cloudchannelnetwork.com.  Simply sign up for each individual webcast you wish to attend to receive a reminder before the event.

Now streaming on-demand

Smart Partner Marketing using Digital Best Practices
Presented on May 3, 2017
Join Jennifer Tomlinson, an expert in service provider marketing, to learn how other organizations use digital marketing successfully. Included in this webcast:

  • Develop a customer journey framework to build content to your targeted personas
  • Hear from the Marketing Trainer Microsoft uses to build content
  • Leverage principles of Customer Experience to exponentially grow your businesses

Upcoming Webcasts

Q4 Office 365 Sales Training Series:

Session 1: Build with Office 365 - Security As A Service
May 18, 2017 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM Pacific Time
This is the first session in the Q4 Office 365 Sales Training Series.  In this live sales training session, we will introduce Security As A Service. Partner sellers will learn the building blocks of Security As A Service, understand the competition and market opportunity, as well as Licensing and the monetization opportunity. Learning Outcome: Partner sellers understand the building blocks and market opportunity of Security as a Service.

Session 2: Office 365: Winning with Office 365
May 23, 2017 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM Pacific Time
This is the second session in the Q4 Office 365 Sales Training Series. Session Abstract: In this live sales training session, Partner sellers will learn what differentiates Office 365 from other products including G Suite, Freemium, and Office 365 vs. On-prem. We will compare services and key features, and the value Office 365 provides to SMB customers. Learning Outcome: Partner sellers understand and can clearly communicate to customers the difference between Office 365 and other services available to them.

Session 3: Office 365: Office 365 Technical Deep Dive
June 8, 2017 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM Pacific Time
This is the third session in the Q4 Office 365 Sales Training Series. Session Abstract: In this live sales training session, we will cover the most frequently asked questions we receive from Partners for Office 365. Topics will include sales training readiness, technical questions relating to Azure, how to demo Office 365, and how to differentiate Office 365 from other services.

Licensing Update

Update to Services Provider License Agreement

On April 16, 2017, Microsoft released a minor update to the Services Provider License Agreement. The update will include the definition of a Reciprocal Service Provider. No other changes were made. The SPLA April 2017 update is a minor agreement refresh. Nearly all Service Providers will keep the existing SPLA business rules without disruption or any other changes in their Microsoft relationship. For further details, please contact your SPLA Reseller.

Solution News

Reminder: CSP Power Up offers available through June 30 

Don't miss out on the CSP Cloud Power Up suite of incentives for Resellers (Direct & Resellers) and Indirect Providers . CSP Cloud Power Up incentives are designed to help you boost profitability, increase customer adoption of cloud services, sell more premium SKUs, and cross sell new cloud services.
Learn more about the offer.

Ready your team for SQL Server on Linux
Bring the performance and security of SQL Server to Linux! Widely adopted on the Windows Platform, SQL Server power, security, and functionality will be extended to the Linux Operating Systems this year, with the public preview now available.  SQL on Linux, part of the upcoming SQL vNext release, is an important Microsoft investment to make SQL available on any platform.

Managed Service Providers have an incredible opportunity to address new market demand by providing deployment, monitoring, management, security, scalability, and migrations for SQL workloads supporting customers’ applications running on Linux.

Hybrid cloud just got easier: New Azure Migration resources and tools available
Gain access to all of the Azure migration tools available for partners, including the Cloud Migration Assessment tool. Read more >

Discover and act on insights with new Azure monitoring and diagnostics capabilities
Azure management and security services help you to gain greater visibility into your environment with advanced data analysis and visualization, and make it easy to turn insights into action. Read more >

Marketing News

Understand the Hybrid Marketplace – Special Report: 2017 Cloud & Hosting Study

Released at the 2017 Microsoft Cloud & Hosting Summit, the study captures the most critical customer needs and market trends based on a survey of 1,700 organizations worldwide. Read this overview of the study findings by Aziz Benmalek, Vice President, Worldwide Cloud & Managed Service Providers; and download the full report to explore the myriad of insights.

Market like Microsoft: Cloud Study Graphics

Want to share the study with your network? Download the Twitter graphics to promote the findings of the 2017 Cloud & Hosting Study to your own community, reinforcing the opportunity ahead for us all.

From the Hosting Insights Blog

These are our newest blog post articles, written from expert perspectives:

Partner News

Inspirational Service Provider stories, this month featuring Microsoft Azure and Hybrid Cloud solutions

Rackspace and Domino's Pizza 
See how RackSpace used an Azure PaaS solution to help Domino’s Australia move from a traditional brick and mortar business to one grounded in e-commerce.

[embed]https://youtu.be/mMpASc8M_2w[/embed]

Hosters A/S
Hosters believes in the “adapt or die” go-to-market scenario. One of the top managed service providers through CSP, Hosters shares how they spark their ISV partners’ success.

[embed]https://youtu.be/G8DzcZY02hk[/embed]