Microsoft Talk

Joint initiative is expected to provide new revenue and allow VARs to take on strategic role.

Microsoft Corp. and HP today announced a joint initiative that will enable value-added resellers (VARs) to benefit from a software-plus-services business model by providing new revenue streams and helping them become strategic advisors to their clients.

HP and Microsoft plan to equip VARs with comprehensive tools and guidance that will enable them to offer “private label” Microsoft solutions that are hosted by managed service providers. As a result, they can generate new revenue streams by offering their small and midsize business (SMB) customers a greater choice of solution delivery methods.

Microsoft and HP are also providing solution configurations based on HP BladeSystem, HP ProLiant and HP StorageWorks products. This will make it easier for customers and partners to plan for and deploy hosted Web services. These solutions can be sold to managed service providers looking to expand their hosting business by deploying the Microsoft virtualization platform and management tools for the optimized delivery of Windows-based workloads such as Hosted Microsoft Exchange Server, hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Windows SharePoint Services, as well as to companies that want to enter the hosting business. For these companies, Microsoft has a full suite of datacenter virtualization products and tools to enable the creation of the dynamic datacenter, providing automated, optimized services on demand that level the competitive playing field relating to size and scale.

By enabling VARs to offer SMB customers a choice of traditional on-premise and as-a-service IT delivery models, the private-label initiative allows VARs to extend their role as strategic IT advisors by helping customers optimize IT investments and productivity as customers migrate to Web services.

In addition to generating a software-plus-services revenue stream for supplying customers with private-label Microsoft solutions, VARs also can provide value-added services such as integration, customization and remote provisioning to managed service provider customers. This initiative expands on HP’s and Microsoft’s existing strategic Frontline Partnership to help increase the adoption of HP datacenter infrastructure and Microsoft technologies by managed service providers.