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A new SaaS platform being launched this week promises to shave months off business set-up times for aspiring Cloud Service providers - and save customers thousands of dollars as well.
Umbrellar’s MyCSP platform, an all-in-one answer for establishing businesses as Microsoft-focused CSP resellers, has been trialed and tested to perfection over the past two years.
It launches today. (Thursday 5 November, 2020).
Utilising more than 120,000 Microsoft products (Azure, Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365) , the MyCSP website is destined to become a “must have” for anyone wanting to become a Microsoft partner.
Umbrellar’s head of cloud, David Howden, believes it’s the first time Microsoft’s vast range of products have been turned into a fully-formed “commerce engine”.
He’s proud of the results.
“We’re creating an ecosystem for New Zealand’s managed service providers to fully understand the power of the Microsoft technology that’s in front of them so they can transform their customers,” he says.
“A great commerce experience, plus our highly curated ecosystem of partners is what creates an accelerator effect for the New Zealand IT market.”
Since 1997, Umbrellar has offered cloud-based tech solutions for customers in the New Zealand market.
From today, the Auckland-based company will work exclusively with Microsoft and their Azure Marketplace partners.
“Instead of doing hundreds of products, we’re going to do one, and that’s Microsoft,” says Howden.
The benefits from the pivot are the knowledge and experience Umbrellar can provide.
“By sticking to one service provider we go tight and deep on everything Microsoft,” he says.
“We’re obsessed with knowing and being the trusted source of truth on how to get the best out of the Microsoft CSP program.”
Previously, setting up a similar kind of business would take customers between six and nine months.
MyCSP will help customers avoid costly dead ends trying to understand Microsoft’s complex range of products.
“All of these technologies, used right, are massively transformational, but used incorrectly are basically a waste of money,” says Howden.
MyCSP promises to vastly speed that time up, and cut down on mistakes.
“Our time to market is around 90 minutes,” says Howden.
“You go to the MyCSP website, login, create your store, and within 90 minutes you have a fully branded Microsoft cloud store ready to go and take to your customers.
“That speed to market is significantly reduced. It means the time to get Microsoft-ready is now massively efficient.”
Howden, who has been working towards the MyCSP launch since he started at Umbrellar four years ago, says the platform is as good as it gets, and compliments their obsessive nature for CSP and Azure Managed Services capability.
“It’s been a nearly four-year learning journey. When it comes to talking Microsoft, it’s like learning a new language. We’ve now got that language down. We get it, we understand it, we know it.
“We can get to value quicker because we understand the language.”
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Get the Cloud, Done Right. Umbrellar Powered by Pax8 is New Zealand's prime Professional and Managed Cloud Services specialist. Recently acquired by Pax8, we're transitioning into something "harder, better, faster, stronger" (thank you, Daft Punk!). Watch this space!
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The cloud creates new paradigms for the technologies that support the business. These new paradigms also change how those technologies are adopted, managed, and governed. When entire datacenters can be virtually torn down and rebuilt with one line of code executed by an unattended process, we have to rethink traditional approaches. This is especially true for governance. Cloud governance is an iterative process. For organizations with existing policies that govern on-premises IT environments, cloud governance should complement those policies. The level of corporate policy integration between on-premises and the cloud varies depending on cloud governance maturity and a digital estate in the cloud. As the cloud estate changes over time, so do cloud governance processes and policies.