The two plans

In general, there are two types of plans in order to facilitate the CSPs to meet their customers’ support needs.

1. Microsoft Advanced Support for Partners
2. Microsoft Premier Support for Partners

In the case of Microsoft Advanced Support for Partners, Microsoft provides support for fixing issues, resolving problems. In case of Microsoft Premier Support for Partners, Microsoft provides you with an ability to identify new areas of growth in the existing cloud-enabled services. In this way, new areas of revenue can be opened up in your business.

Keeping “billing” in the limelight

In order to be successful, CSPs need to focus on four major points: Support, service based model, scalability and billing. Out of these four, billing is the most important aspect of a successful CSP Tier 1 partner. CSPs need to directly monitor and provision the subscriptions and manage the customer’s queries related to billing and management. To be a winner in this era, it is important to focus on Direct Billing methods and increase profitability. The billing module must have recurring billing options with proper payment processing.

In order to stay on track on as a Microsoft Tier 1 CSP, you need to show two main key capabilities. First, either you need to provide your customers with an IP service, a solution application or provide a managed service. And secondly, you need to be equipped with a decent infrastructure and enable billing within your systems. In case, either of these capabilities is not fulfilled, the CSPs can continue to provide services as indirect providers.

MachPanel: Keeping you on the CSP track

If you are still wondering where to start from, MachPanel can help you with it. It provides a platform that empowers Microsoft CSPs through end-to-end business management. MachPanel gives you an option to own and control your billing. With an ability of Direct Billing, it automates all major aspects related to business financial operations. It manages unified and consolidated invoices that help simplify the billing processes. This is available for Microsoft Office365 and Azure CSP Billing structures.

MachPanel also offers you the option of recurring billing and automatic subscriptions so that consumers do not have to go for subscriptions every month.  Apart from that, it also enables you to showcase your products in a customized storefront, gives an option of extensive reporting with a few clicks, gives a complete bird’s eye view of the usage calculations and much more. Through the bill and support system, along with complete business automation solutions, the success of your business is accelerated. MachPanel is a reliable partner that provides Profit management for Microsoft Distributors.

MachPanel the Multi-Cloud Service Orchestration & Delivery Platform (MSOP) is an ideal solution that fits for your need, supporting feature that no one else can provide.

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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.

The post All you need to know about Reselling Microsoft Azure & Office 365 appeared first on MachSol Blog.