Velocity is designed to deliver the best enablement to Microsoft Partners who have shown the desire and capacity for accelerated growth on the Azure cloud platform and propel them towards Silver Competency and then on to successful and profitable customer acquisition. Training and tools are provided, allowing partners to up-skill and attain Microsoft Certified Competencies, thus strengthening their competitive position. Investment totals over £20,000 per partner.
The programme advances partner sales and technical people through the relevant tracks and aims to have them ready to go when the marketing elements kick-in. This way they can start generating revenue and move towards attainment of their Microsoft Cloud Competency straight away. Each partner is supported by named Business Development Executives, Solutions Architects, and Cloud Solutions Specialists.
One of the partners that has benefited is San-iT. Barry Lowe, Managing Director, said: ‘Velocity has been great for us as a business. The training has helped our team understand the products and how to deliver to customers. We achieved our Microsoft Silver Azure competency status and have since invested in building up our marketing. As a result, we’ve seen a real influx of sales.”
Andrew Seaton, Managing Director of Resolve, which is also engaging on the programme, added: “Velocity has accelerated our learning and it’s given us a much higher level of confidence when it comes to providing solutions on Azure. We are close to achieving Microsoft Silver competency and this will be a huge benefit to our business.”
Dwayne Earl, Software Business Unit Manager for Tech Data, stated: “Velocity is a real differentiator and helps partners to drive significant revenues. To date, we’ve put more than 70 individuals from around 50 resellers through a five-day Azure technical training courses and we’ve seen their revenues with Azure and with CSP [the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider programme] grow significantly over the past six months. It’s been a great success and it’s now a very well tried and tested programme, so we are very keen to sign up more partners and get them started on their cloud journey.”