A Better Way to Manage Microsoft Office 365?

By samdizzy

What if there was a better way for channel partners to manage Office 365, Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) cloud software suite? Chris Pyle, president and CEO of Champion Solutions Group, thinks he has the answer. It’s called 365 Command, powered by MessageOps.

Hosted in Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud, 365 Command offers three core capabilities to channel partners — particularly those that want to wrap managed services around Office 365. Those capabilities include:

Pyle demonstrated 365 Command last week at the Tech Data TDCloud conference near Tampa, Fla. Roughly 100 attendees — mostly VARs and MSPs — seemed genuinely impressed with the service. Pricing starts at $19.95 for up to 50 seats per minth. Price-per-seat costs drop to $0.10 per month when partners scale to more than 1,000 seats. Partners can cancel the month-to-month service at any time.

Roughly 600 customers and partners uses the platform. Those customers and partners managing 365,000 mailboxes from all over the world, Pyle indicated in an email to Talkin’ Cloud.

The Bigger Picture

After Office 365 experienced some channel turbulence in 2011 and early 2012, Talkin’ Cloud believes the cloud suite has turned the corner and is now gaining traction with channel partners. Two examples:

Changing Times

But here’s the irony: Once Microsoft delivers Office 365 Open in the next few weeks or months, partners can set their own pricing and manage end-customer billing. To differentiate, partners will need to wrap more services around Microsoft’s cloud suite. And that’s where 365 Command could enter the picture.

Pyle notes that 365 Command can empower VARs and MSPs to deliver the following services:

Other Options?

One thing I still need to explore: How does 365 Command differ from remote monitoring and management (RMM) software, such as Level Platforms, which offers some Office 365 management capabilities? Frankly, I don’t know the answer to that just yet.

But we’re checking. And we’ll stay in touch with Pyle to see how the 365 Command strategy performs in the weeks and months ahead.