What a week! More than 17,000 attendees packed a convention center in Washington D.C. to hear Microsoft’s latest direction and connect with partners and ISVs from around the globe. Microsoft wasted no time getting down to business and delivered a week full of new initiatives and reinforced strategic direction for partners to execute. I walked away convinced Microsoft has the right vision to help customers – and Quest is positioned perfectly to deliver on that promise. We’ll look at three inspiring reasons why this is true, but first, let’s dive a little deeper into what Microsoft discussed.
Microsoft’s key theme: it’s a cloud-first, mobile-first world
No doubt Microsoft has transformed itself into a cloud business that supports customers on their journey to the anywhere, everywhere organization and employee. While that’s not news, what is new is how Microsoft views the differences among different size companies in different industries.
Empowering employees to better engage customers means understanding their businesses and pain points. Helping customers optimize operations and offer transformative products demands domain expertise. That’s why Microsoft is organizing around six priority industries – retail, financial services, government, manufacturing, healthcare and education.
This shift resonated with attendees, as Microsoft pointed out this approach applies across the business, from product teams to sales teams. From a selfish perspective, I couldn’t be happier, as we have more than a decade of experience in solving problems for customers in these specific industries. This reinforces Quest’s position as a prime ISV to capitalize on these initiatives and help customers everywhere.
Three reasons Quest is the ISV of choice
- We are Quest again. As a true independent software vendor, we are intensely focused on one thing: delivering powerful software products and unrivaled service. I talked to many partners at the show and they remember when Quest Software was first independent and how easy it was to transact with us. They remember the products we offer flat out delivered on what we promised. We’ll, we are back!
- We are innovative. In the short time since we’ve been independent again, we have increased our R&D budget and released new products in new ways. We launched our first-ever SaaS Azure AD platform management solution during this show. This cloud-born, cloud-ready product helps customers manage policies and recover objects in Azure all through a streamlined, single-pane-of-glass interface. Even better, we just launched Quest VROOM®, which dramatically accelerates the performance of virtual infrastructure and improves the application experience for the user. Partners need viable solutions that are on the edge of emerging customers’ challenges and we are right there delivering those solutions.
- Our Partner Program is easy. When we were spun off, we spent a lot of time revamping our program to align with the values on which our company was built. Quest Partner Circle offers a simple program for partner transactions with terms, tiers and pricing that’s easy. All that equates to profitability for partners, as speed to market and customer ROI will drive more sales and revenue.
When you add those reasons to our long pedigree of serving customers in the industries Microsoft is focusing on – you’ll see we are a dependable partner. We’re looking forward to working with more partners and supporting them as they help customers make their way to the cloud.