LAS VEGAS – Microsoft Inspire 2019, the company’s annual partner conference, kicked off Monday, when temperatures soared to nearly 110 degrees. Inside, Azure migrations and transitioning customers to Office 365 were two of the day’s hottest topics. According to Gavriella Schuster, vice president for Microsoft's One Commercial Partner organization, both present massive opportunities for partners.
"You know that we estimate about 60 percent of our server installed base is still on Windows Server and SQL Server 2008,” she said. “That's 24 million instances. That is a $50 billion market opportunity that you should be going after right now, this year.”
Since downtime can have a significant impact on revenue, many companies delay migrations, or avoid them completely. Carbonite Migrate streamlines workload migrations associated with Microsoft end-of-support and to Azure. Throughout the Inspire event, we are offering in-booth presentations on how Carbonite can streamline migration tasks and help grow your Microsoft business. We are also offering one-on-one product demos, for a deeper dive.
Schuster also noted the sheer size of the small to midsized business space, and the huge opportunity for partners to move customers to Office 365. "There are 76 million customers in [the SMB space]. It is an $80 billion market opportunity,” she said. “And Office 365 is in less than 10 percent of those customers. That is a lot of upside for all of you.”
Schuster pointed to Teams specifically as a potential growth area for partners. “How many of you remember the explosive growth of SharePoint about a decade ago?,” she asked. “Teams is already on a faster trajectory than that. [Teams allows you to] bring business applications to the forefront of the user experience in one single shared workspace."
Carbonite plays in the Office 365 space too, having recently announced backup for the entire Office 365 suite, including Teams. Throughout the week, will be presenting on the importance of Office 365 backup, Carbonite’s Office 365 backup solution, and how it can benefit you and your customers.
If you are attending the event, swing by the Carbonite booth to learn more.
