We are all about partners. Than came along FastTrack from Microsoft. From my conscious thoughts, it’s a double edged sword. The idea was great but it does have some flaws from my perspective. I am not going to explain about this FastTrack in my post, to understand further you can refer to this link.
Yes, I can understand that Microsoft has created this FastTrack to ease up clients transition and on-boarding process to Microsoft Cloud Solutions such as Office 365, Enterprise Mobility + Security etc but not at the expense of the partner whom did all the convincing, discussion and strategy planning with the client before they made the decision to move to Microsoft Cloud solutions. Honestly, why would a partner want to take or contribute to all the effort in convincing the client when in-directly this partner stands to lose out the total services revenue because of FastTrack. The irony, FastTrack offers on-boarding, migrating, driving consumption of the selected Microsoft workloads at no cost to the client whom have signed up with Microsoft Cloud Solution, when services partners survival depends on such services.
To make things worst, I have been approached by Microsoft reps whom have expressed that I as a Microsoft partner (services partner) should communicate with my prospects (clients) that Microsoft has this so called FastTrack program where free services will be provided to client in regards to their on-boarding and migration when the existence of the partner services depends on delivering such services at a cost to clients. To make it more spicy, I have also been told that in an event if I run into screw- ups in my service delivery and if I had not engaged FastTrack or work with them closely in regards to clients migration/on-boarding, I can’t seek the local Microsoft reps support. Come on, Grow up folks you want the partners to do all the pre-work but you don’t want them to continue the services portion? To make things worst, this FastTrack team calls our newly enrolled clients directly to update them on what’s FastTrack and why they should use this free FastTrack services. Hello, what’s up? Where did your partner ecosystem go to? Shouldn’t you have the basic courtesy to call up the partner and have a discussion with them first before calling the clients? Basic Sync-Up, come on!
Don’t you think you guys are just driving us (services partners) to the corner with such talks and actions? It’s already so tough to secure deals and position our delivery services and now we have to compete with Microsoft FastTack? Don’t force us, there is always a game changer waiting somewhere to counter. I can understand that FastTrack helps clients to keep their cost of services at $0 if FastTrack services is utilized. I can also understand this really helps lots of SMB clients. I also do acknowledge that FastTrack is assisting with the consumption of the selected workloads. But what I don’t understand here is why should I do a mandatory sharing of FastTrack to our prospective clients and highlight the portion where FastTrack is a free service. I strongly feel the engagement process between partners, clients and FastTrack should be managed and maintained by the partner and not the FastTrack team. Unless the partners gives them the all go ahead signal to engage with client directly.
I don’t know if this is owned out of Microsoft Corp or which segment but we need to establish the basis of engagement first and not mess up partner deployment services. I am very sure this saga isn’t going to end anytime soon but as partners we have to make our voice heard.
Sign Off, Conscious Words.
Conscious Words 