Local SMB customers looking to navigate into the cloud can now do so with ease with the launch of Microsoft’s robust cloud Platform Azure, now available to resellers from Westcon Southern Africa.
The Microsoft Azure solution enables you to either assist, or deploy, on behalf of your customers, applications, services and solutions that are hosted and managed in the cloud. All of which then reside on a series of secure networked Microsoft datacentres across the globe.
“Azure is an ideal solution for the SMB customers of our value-added resellers who are in the business of developing and deploying custom or tailor-made solutions specifically designed around an express customer need or industry,” states Kevin George, Microsoft business lead at Westcon Southern Africa. “It provides the perfect cloud platform to enable you to develop and provide profitable solutions quickly.”
Specific solutions can include:
Data backup in the cloud – Provide your customers with a quantifiable, easy to use and scalable cloud-based data backup service. This is a particularly attractive solution for Microsoft offerings such as file servers, SharePoint, SQL Server, and Exchange. According to Microsoft a key aspect of this offering is that resellers can assure customers of encrypted backups for improved data protection at a cost that an SMB customer can afford.
Applications on virtual machines – Through this offering your customers will be able to host applications on an Azure VM. This is particularly appropriate for customers who need to rapidly deploy applications as a result of a need to scale quickly or to change and upgrade their environment as a result of an end of life product. An example of this could be Windows Server 2003 as its end of life is scheduled for 15 July 2015.
Azure hosted websites – For partners who are already in the website hosting game, you yourself can reduce your reliance on physical hardware by hosting your customer sites offsite and in the cloud. The Azure platform will also enable you to scale out your customer sites at a lower cost to yourself as well as your customer.
“The ways in which you can deploy and package Azure are endless. The main benefit of Azure is that there are no upfront infrastructure costs, you reduce the need to perform IT management on a physical footprint and perhaps more importantly, you can scale out as and when you need to.
“Azure enables you to build solutions and deploy them at your customers as well as take the solution to your customer. It literally smashes the barrier to entry, based on required investment, to starting an IT business or delivering a new service,” ends George.
