This Cloud Wars Special Report features Bob Evans and Tom Smith. They talk about this week’s Biz Apps Partner Summit, put on by Acceleration Economy’s parent company, Dynamics Communities. It’s taking place in Bellevue, Washington, and Bob is attending. Biz Apps Partner Summit brings together Microsoft leaders with partners from integration firms, consulting firms, ISVs, and others around the Microsoft business apps market.
Highlights
01:16 — Bob has a session at the Biz Apps Partner Summit about Microsoft partners. He’s thinking about historical context. This embrace of the ecosystem is not new to Microsoft. About 20–25 years ago, Bill Gates said, “If you want to be a platform company, you’ve got to be able to create 10 times more value for your community, your ecosystem, than you do for yourself.”
02:20 — In this whole AI revolution, the movement of cloud and enterprise technology into every facet of every business is not just for this department or that one or certain functions; it’s becoming completely pervasive. There are now opportunities on the ultimate customer front and in the way that ecosystem players are moving into new, more high-value roles.
03:20 — AI is becoming a ubiquitous, pervasive interface to everything — to that, Tom says opportunity is out there for partners, opportunity like never before around the technical innovation going on, the speed at which it’s happening, and in terms of customers needing both guidance and expertise to go along with the products coming from the likes of Microsoft.
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04:06 — One way, Bob says, is the speed at which this is going to happen. A very close partner of Microsoft, SAP, says its CEO, Christian Klein, thinks that by the end of this calendar year, there will be upwards of 300 million people using its Joule Copilot. So, if what Charles Lamanna said about Microsoft and how fast this will be is true, then that perspective from SAP shows it will be quite a ride.
05:17 — The SAP example is noteworthy. SAP is a different scale of partner, obviously, as a massive enterprise software leader, but Microsoft is working with them, too, in the context of Joule and Microsoft Copilot. So, Tom thinks that speaks to how expansive the ecosystem for Microsoft is and how this technology is permeating all levels and types of relationships.
05:47 — Bob concludes the idea that some people have traditionally thought of partners and ecosystems as filling little niches. While there is still value in that, what’s opening up are bigger, broader, and more pervasive opportunities than we’ve seen before, and it isn’t just the type of opportunities, but the scale of them.
