Exclusive Interview: Venkat Krishnan, Executive Director, Commercial Partners, Microsoft India

In an exclusive interview with DQ Channels, Venkat Krishnan, Executive Director, Commercial Partners, Microsoft India shared deep insights on Microsoft's Partner Ecosystem in India. 

How would you describe the role of your partners in supporting you in achieving your overall vision?

The Microsoft partner community is a powerful ecosystem and is at the centre of how we bring technologies and business transformation to our customers. For decades, we have shared a common goal with our partners - and that is to help our customers achieve more with digital tools and technologies.

At Microsoft, we believe that partners make more possible. This belief is truly at the core of why we continue to invest in our partner ecosystem, to ensure we are adding value, visibility, and relevance for our partners. It is the inspiration behind many of the programmatic changes we are working on for the future.

Microsoft builds programs that help partners grow and invests in their training, support, and go-to-market resources, and much more so that they can compete and lead in their industries. We are strengthening our go-to-market strategy by prioritizing investments that support new opportunities for our partners in future. We continually listen to the partner community and seek feedback on our initiatives and programs, so we can target our efforts to help partners overcome challenges, evolve to meet the opportunities in the marketplace, and accelerate growth for their business and their customers.

Any strategies for expanding your partner ecosystem?

Partnerships are built on a foundation of trust and Microsoft secures that trust by designing and delivering thoughtful, customer-first and partner-led initiatives and programs. Microsoft is providing its partners with the tools and support to deliver transformative solutions that empower customers around the world to achieve more.

Microsoft is strengthening its partner’s abilities by enabling them to co-develop, co-market, and co-sell solutions through interactive engagement with us and other partners. We are constantly enabling our partners to connect with our global customer base and differentiate themselves on the Azure marketplace through their skills and services. To create additional value across the Microsoft ecosystem, we are also offering opportunities for collaborative sales to our partners. Further, through co-selling, our partners can leverage our sales teams, demand-generation capabilities, and the commercial marketplace to reach new customers worldwide and sell with both Microsoft and other partners.

We are also investing in Partner Center as the central point for partners to manage their relationship with Microsoft, track their customer interaction and success, and engage with Microsoft Partner Network programs, offers, and incentives. Additionally, we are investing in proactive outreach and account management, and are consolidating touchpoints across the support process so partners understand their options and can receive assistance quickly and efficiently for better market reach.

There is a transition in the digital adoption journey in the ecosystem, with partners moving on to the cloud business. How is Microsoft helping those partners on this journey?

Driven by the pace of digital transformation, the opportunities of the intelligent cloud and the intelligent edge, and the imperative of tech intensity, partners are striving to meet customers’ emerging needs and expectations. The depth of Microsoft’s cloud offerings and breadth of our technology portfolio enables partners to build innovative products and services that enable virtually any scenario or function, for any customer, anywhere.

The strength of our tech stack and the reach and expertise of our partners make our goals achievable, our offerings unique, and our impact undeniable. Together, we are working toward the same goals: innovate and deliver new solutions and therefore, drive success and digital transformation for customers.

How Microsoft is helping its partners hone new-age skills and expertise on Microsoft platforms?

To ensure that partners have the resources to innovate and drive growth, Microsoft has been consistently investing in skilling programs. In FY20, training on Microsoft products and solutions were provided to more than 3 million partner employees, resulting in more than 96,000 new certifications. In India, over 4 lakh professionals from partner organizations have attended training programs in FY20.

Based on insights and best practices from more than 1,000 partners, the Cloud Practice Development Playbooks offer blueprints and tools to develop, analyze, manage, and secure an effective cloud practice that is built to last. Microsoft Learn simplifies and centralizes training and development offerings so partners can easily strengthen their skills, explore new technologies and market opportunities, and track progress toward completing industry-recognized Microsoft certifications and individual task modules.

Partners now have more options to differentiate themselves with new competencies and advanced specializations that will help them highlight their technical and solution area expertise, showcase the breadth and depth of their skills, and lead in new market opportunities.

How much does Microsoft think about the profitability of partners?

Microsoft’s success depends on its partners, and this helps deliver transformational results for customers. We have a shared commitment to growth and profitability with our partner community and are dedicated to their growth.

We support our partners by investing in the tools and services they need to expand their reach and therefore, enable them to empower customers and grow their businesses.

• An unmatched technology portfolio: Partners can build innovative solutions to empower virtually any scenario or function, for any customer, anywhere.
• Global reach: Partners can tap into our global customer base, differentiate themselves on our marketplace, and easily connect with the customers who need their skills and services.
• Investments in their future: We offer training, support, and go-to-market services so our partners can compete—and lead—in their industries.
• More ways to grow: Partners can also connect with other partners, as well as Microsoft experts, who can help them deliver more. This helps partners grow their skills and expertise to influence the opportunities they capture and drive digital transformation for customers.

Partner investment and incentive programs are designed to reward partners when they deliver strategic solutions to drive exceptional results for customers. This year, we have prioritized our programs to reward partners on transforming how teams work and increase organizational productivity, adjusted our programs to prioritize opportunities that help partners differentiate, enhance their offerings, and drive more value to customers and are rewarding partners for enabling and supporting our customers’ journey to the cloud.

How do you broadly categorize your partners?

The Microsoft partner ecosystem empowers organizations to build innovative solutions on the Microsoft technology stack and grow their business through our tools and training; create and execute a customized Go-to-Market plan; leverage our global brand, sales teams, demand generation capabilities and the commercial marketplace to reach new customers worldwide through co-selling with other partners and with us. Partners also have the opportunity to form symbiotic relationships with other partners to gain valuable industry insights, create more robust customer experiences and larger sales opportunities and differentiate their organization through competencies and advanced specializations. Our partners are broadly classified by their business models to represent the breadth of our ecosystem:

• Services partners - Companies that deliver a set of services that customers rely on to manage information and workloads.
• Advisories and Global System Integrator (GSI) partners – These are System Integrators (SIs) and part of the Fortune 1000 technology companies that deploy and offer services around Microsoft solutions to the Fortune 500. The advisory and GSI portfolio includes management consulting firms, advisories and accounting firms, heritage Indian GSI and commercial GSIs.
• Startups and Independent Software Vendor partners (ISVs) - Companies that develop intellectual property, often packaged applications or solutions that either sit on top of or run alongside Microsoft solutions.

In addition, we have a large set of licensing and cloud solution partners focused on the different market segments and providing cloud solutions to customers across the country.

Would you like to elaborate on Microsoft’s partner ecosystem in India?

Everything that we do is with our partners and our shared customers in mind – partners are core to our business. Partners influence more than 95% of Microsoft’s commercial revenue, either directly or in partnership. In India, the ecosystem currently has more than 11,000 partners. Our entry point is the Microsoft Partner Network — a portfolio of resources, programs, and offers for any company that wants to partner with Microsoft. Our local partners include a large suite of independent software vendors, consulting and advisory firms, managed service providers, system integrator companies, distributors, and value-added resellers. Our partners see the benefits that when they dive deeper with our solutions – and that’s why several large tech organizations have announced dedicated Microsoft Business Units to focus on developing and evangelizing solutions leveraging Microsoft’s enterprise cloud services.