The two tiers

Microsoft has introduced its reselling into two tier models. In Tier 1 model, you partner directly with Microsoft to gain access to its products and services and resell them to your clients, like resell Microsoft Azure and Office 365 Packages. In case of Tier2, the services and products of Microsoft are distributed by whole sellers and Distributors and through other sellers. These distributors are Partners with Microsoft and also work as a middle man. They deal with Microsoft at one end and give their services like Microsoft Office 365 and Azure to thousands of 2 – tier resellers at other end. There are a limited number of authorized distributors by Microsoft around the world. The tier 1 sellers however get a chance to be engaged with their customers at a deeper level and make more profit out of it. Not only you will be able to add value to customer’s customized solutions, you will also be able to provide managed services upon customer’s demand.

Challenges in reselling Microsoft Azure and Office 365

Tier 1 CSP Partners have to take care of a number of challenges and certain requirements. All of them revolve around the increasing business demands of today by consumers. Some of the basic challenges are:

1. The availability of salesforce flow in the cloud where user centric business processes are deployed without any development to increase agility
2. A proper integration with Storefront where consumers would showcase their brands and other products. AI based suggestions customized for each customer is the next trend in the cloud marketplace as provided in Microsoft Azure.
3. Increasing E-commerce requirements where there is a need to provide Predictive Intelligence and a personalized shopping experience as per the growing demand from consumers.
4. A seamless support system on which consumers can rely on is a basic requirement of every tier 1 CSP.
5. A decent customer management system is necessary to take care of the Operation Management Suite (OMS) requirements for hybrid cloud.
6. An all-in-one Billing system and invoicing management system is necessary to make managing of recurring billing and subscriptions seamless as handled in Office 365 Packages.
7. Reports and Analytics are an integral part of any CSP. A reliable system that caters this requirement and provides easy method to create on demand Reports with just a few clicks is a basic requirement.
8. Many a times, Third Parties have to integrate their modules into the system. So a reliable API integration method needs to exist which can take care of the third party tools and plugins in order to work seamlessly with in-house systems.

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To all these major challenges, MachPanel offers a complete solution. Not only there is a built-in Marketplace to showcase the products, there is a robust reporting and Analytics system that has been developed keeping the current needs of reporting in mind. Billing and invoices are managed with its automatic subscription and recurring billing options. All this is present in one neat interface where there is less hassle and with just a few simple steps it makes the challenge of selling seats quite easy along with running a smooth automated system as a CSP tier 1 partner.

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