This article is more than 1 year old

Microsoft boutiques club together for E5 licensing assault

The Consortium has landed and have bloated SIs in their sights

A handful of Microsoft boutiques are linking arms in a bid to win E5 licensing deals against the bulky resellers and global integrators.

E5, sold on a subscription, covers Azure, Enterprise Mobility Suite, Exchange, Office 365 and Office Delve, One Drive, Power BI, Project, SharePoint, Skype for Business, SQL Server and Yammer.

The Consortium, as the gaggle of Microsoft houses is branded, includes Content and Code, Modality, Inframon, Coeo and Programme Framework.

Tim Wallis, CEO at Microsoft cloud poster boy Content and Code, told us Microsoft was heavily promoting “all encompassing” E5 licenses but specialists tended to lack technical skills to sell the whole stack.

“We’ve brought together five suppliers that can cover all the bases,” he told us, “Microsoft needs a group of partners to help them sell and deliver E5. The SIs are inflexible and slow, and not interested in contracts below half a million pounds”.

The five Microsoft suppliers are all participating in G Cloud, are working on ISA quality and security certifications, and have positive Net Promoter Scores, Wallis claimed.

Leads are to be passed free of charge between the Consortium members based on "customers’ requirements", and the sub-contractors Ts&Cs will be baked into a contract.

Microsoft insiders claimed a series of tasty financial incentives will be dangled in front of the channel at the forthcoming Worldwide Partner Conference. “There will be a ton of them,” he said.

We asked Microsoft a bunch of questions but it sent us a statement that answered none of them.

“We welcome the initiative taken by some of our strongest partners in forming alliances to partner for growth and capture the market opportunity around Office 365, E5, Dynamics and Azure,” said Laura Bouchard, director of channel sales. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like