Who are the 42,000 cloud computing partners of Microsoft?

Every time Microsoft announces the winner of Office 365 in the new cloud of computing, Talkin ' cloud will repeat the confusion: what channel partners are involved in the deployment of Office 365? Microsoft's standard answer is: The company now has 42,000 cloud partners, compared to last year's 16,000 growth.

The growth was staggering. But there is a bigger question: How many Office 365 Cloud Partners are truly active, engaging and winning multiple deals for Office 365? For the moment, it is impossible to tell.

as early as March 2011, talkin ' cloud accurately pointed to the top 10 US cloud-computing partners in Microsoft's Enterprise Productivity Online Suite (the predecessor of Bpos,office 365). The top 10 cloud computing partners have 65 to 390 Microsoft cloud customers around the world. These figures, never directly confirmed by Microsoft, seem to indicate a slow start to the Microsoft Cloud computing partner community.

Microsoft's Cloud computing statement

Fast-forward to the present, Microsoft continues to make a positive statement about the efforts of its cloud computing partners. Earlier this week, Microsoft made its latest statement on Talkin ' cloud. The

Cloud Partner is part of an Office 365 customer transaction and participates in different parts of the product lifecycle. Over the past 12 months, our partner system has expanded by one time, with global partners ranging from 16,000 to 42,000. This partner system is about 10 times times the size of Google. Partners have system integrators, service providers, value-added distributors and independent software developers. They provide services, training, consulting, support, and applications to help customers get as much out of Office 365 as possible. "

gives Microsoft credit. The partner signed a deal to resell Microsoft's cloud services. But whether Microsoft's cloud partners are driving hundreds or even tens of thousands of deals is still unknown.

Business Application Momentum

The latest revenue from Microsoft's release yesterday, with no information on Microsoft cloud revenue. But there are some promising financial trends, pointing out that Office 365 will be a long-term success. In the revenue statement, Microsoft said exchange and SharePoint revenues grew by 10%, and Lync and dynamic CR revenues rose by 30%.

This is some objective number. In the next few months/years, a considerable number of customers will consider the application of Microsoft's indoor business applications to the cloud.

But the big question remains: how much of a partner's role will be in these shifts?
 

(editor: Heritage)