Making it Rain: How to Take Advantage of Your Clients Moving to Microsoft’s Cloud

Earlier this month, Microsoft made headlines with two major announcements about Office. The company said it was making Office free for iOS and Android, and also announced a new tie-in with Dropbox, making it seamless for Dropbox users on iOS and Android to open and edit their files directly in Office applications.

These moves make three things clear. First, Microsoft wants to (and will!) sell more Office 365 licenses to small and medium-size businesses, which increasingly want to take advantage of the cloud while still working with the applications to which they’re accustomed. Second, Microsoft wants to take advantage of the fact that people have become acclimated to purchasing recurring software subscriptions instead of perpetual licenses. Third, this is not only a terrific competitive move for Microsoft, but it also introduces a tremendous opportunity for players in the IT channel.

Business Data in the Cloud

As SMBs adopt Office 365’s business-class email and file storage capabilities in greater numbers, they will store more of their important business data in the cloud. While this may seem like a threat to IT resellers and providers, which have historically taken care of traditional file storage and backup for their clients, the trends that Microsoft’s push for Office 365 rely on are also in MSPs’ and VARs’ favor.

IT resellers and service providers should recognize and emphasize to their clients that migrating email, contacts, documents and more to the cloud does not mean the need for a backup strategy no longer exists. In fact, data in the cloud is even more susceptible to accidental or malicious deletion, especially since a single user’s actions can impact the entire organization. The only way to ensure data integrity in the cloud is to back it up.

Furthermore, since small- and medium-size businesses are getting more comfortable with paying low monthly fees for software and services, charging users a small recurring fee to ensure their data is always backed up and recoverable is an amicable proposition for many SMBs moving to the cloud.

Backup Assurance

Though there are several cloud-to-cloud solutions in the marketplace, eFolder Cloudfinder is by far the most attractive for MSPs and VARs and their clients alike. Cloudfinder allows eFolder’s IT channel partners to set their own pricing and provides an easy-to-use multitenant interface. By backing up emails, contacts, calendars, documents and more to eFolder’s SaveHaven storage system, Cloudfinder–available for Office 365, Google Apps, Salesforce and Box–gives end users the assurance that their cloud data is always securely backed up.

eFolder encourages MSPs and VARs interested in learning more about Cloudfinder, and how it works with Office 365 and other major SaaS providers, to visit cloudfinder.com.

Neeraj Periwal is Marketing Coordinator, eFolder. Guest blogs such as this one are published monthly and are part of MSPmentor’s Cloud-based File Syncing and Sharing Infocenter.