How Are Microsoft Partners Evolving to Keep Up In The New Cloud Era?

The Microsoft ecosystem is undergoing a fundamental change. The move from on premise business solutions to native cloud solutions is inevitable and gaining momentum. Independent software vendors feel increasing pressure to change underlying software to become truly cloud enabled. It's more important than ever that vendors can integrate with modern productivity tools and that software can be consumed through any device, anytime and anywhere. Users are no longer willing to stick to old-fashioned, non-productive methods of doing business.

Every Microsoft partner is witnessing this change and has to adapt to the new requirements set by the end user organizations. Software vendors will have to focus on building solutions for the new generation of users, who have alternative ways of using products, with a focus on mobility and information sharing through chat, collaborative tools, and other flexible, ad hoc methods.

It was almost unheard of a few years ago that an ERP solution would run on a public cloud, but that is now the reality as organizations move closer toward true native cloud solutions every day. New generation Microsoft channel partners with pure cloud business models have formed in the last five years, and many of them are eating up business from more established vendors. However, this is not only happening in the software industry. It is happening across several industries with Uber, Airbnb and similar business models threatening traditional, established companies.

Within the Dynamics product family, the move towards the native cloud has already taken place for CRM. And ERP solutions are rapidly following suit with the latest release of Dynamics AX (AX 7) - the ERP solution that Microsoft offers for midmarket ...