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The Microsoft Azure Cloud presents a massive opportunity for partners to offer new services and solutions to their clients – including Microsoft’s growing suite of AI capabilities.
But first they need to get them off their on-premises systems.
The complexity of some legacy environments can make migrations complex and time consuming, and many partners lack the resources to manage migrations quickly and smoothly for every client.
Dicker Data has noticed this challenge, along with the massive opportunity that the Azure cloud brings, and has partnered with specialist Microsoft services provider TechClick to offer turnkey solutions that help partners plan and execute efficient cloud migrations.
These solutions are designed to help partners' client relationships prosper in the cloud.
"TechClick are fairly unique in that they don't have end customers buying from them directly, which means that we remove or mitigate any concerns around introducing a new partner to the customer ecosystem," explained Dicker Data Microsoft Azure Practice Lead Daniel Janicki.
"They have a significant number of extremely experienced people within the organisation who are also certified, which means they're able to draw down on multiple programs and incentives made available by Microsoft which reduces any costs.”
"They're also extremely good when it comes to communication, all the way through to project completion and handover back to the partner to then manage that customer environment moving forward,” Janicki added.
TechClick's CEO Regina Melamed said her team spent more than two years gaining the skills and certifications needed to support migrations in all scenarios.
Our biggest value is to work with the partner and make sure they're always saying 'yes' to their customers' projects, even when they don't have the skills, rather than losing those customers to other IT providers – Regina Melamed, TechClick
The TechClick migration service
The service consists of two key components. Firstly, TechClick conducts an assessment of the client's environment to determine its current state and how best to translate that into the cloud. This includes creating a fully costed migration plan that incorporates any funding available from Microsoft.
TechClick can then move on to a migration phase, where it creates a 'landing zone' in the cloud and carries out the migration process all the way through to production.
Partners also receive information, training and governance advice that they or their customer can use to continue managing the environment.
Partners are free to determine whether they want to engage TechClick for one or both components, and partners can also manage the interaction between themselves, TechClick, and the client.
“We work alongside the partner,” Melamed said. “We make sure that we loop them into every single communication that we have with their customers. We also have NDAs in place, protecting them at all times and making sure that we can work openly and honestly together.”
How partners have benefitted
At Sydney based FALCO Technology Solutions, Managing Director Byron da Silva said TechClick has been helpful when migrating clients to the cloud quickly.
“We made an acquisition of a small MSP in Melbourne. We inherited quite a lot of on-premise resources from those customers and we found ourselves in a position where we had to migrate 15 customers across as quick as possible to Azure,” he said.
Dicker Data put da Silva in contact with TechClick. “Once we met with them and we built a bit of confidence and figured out what they were all about, it was an absolute no brainer for us to start leveraging them,” he said.
"It allows us to get a basic project done and out the door in about two weeks," da Silva explained.
We can go out there and take on more work because we know we have the capacity, and we can always leverage them when needed – Byron da Silva, FALCO Technology Solutions
At Sydney-based EFEX Group, Chief Technology Officer David Perrett said TechClick has enabled EFEX to take clients to the cloud without requiring additional investment in skills.
"Having a team of technical specialists on the bench waiting for different parts of the stack to come to them was always a challenge for us, so this enables us to move quickly and give our customers the right outcomes," Perrett said.
For Perrett, migrating clients into the Azure cloud also opens up future opportunities.
“Clients like to talk to you about what they're going to do tomorrow, not what's holding them back today,” he said.
“The cloud's been a real on-ramp in a lot of avenues for our customers. It brings on some other challenges around cyber security, which is now becoming an ever-prevalent part of our conversation. But that in itself is an opportunity to keep moving customers' maturity levels up, as they take on and consume more cloud services."
Perrett also appreciated the channel-only basis of TechClick's work.
“It's always a challenge thinking of bringing another partner in, and the overwhelming response to working with the TechClick team has been very positive,” he said.
“They're not only technically very strong, but also they're nice people and people like working with them.”
This combination of skills, experience and expertise means it has never been easier for partners to take their clients into the cloud
Learn more about Dicker Data's Azure Cloud migration program with TechClick.
