Office365 in Russia - why it is so and not otherwise?

The recent announcement about the launch of Office 365 with new partner companies VimpelCom and SKB - circuit caused a lot of noise, but the people who are not familiar with kitchen sales Microsoft, has raised questions - why SKB Kontur and Vimpelcom, where the old proven solution providers such as Softline and Softkey, .

In fact, MS has a rigid, but in my opinion, the only possible solution - to build a new stack for mass sales of products Cloud.

As I wrote. a year ago. In Russia is almost impossible to sell low-margin products podpisochnye through the existing system of distributor - reseller - for short, too few customers in a typical reseller.


Therefore Office365 first launched as an extension of Enterprise Agreement ( says a respected expert, Enterprise Agreement - this is the only product that sells Microsoft, and everything else - complete questions. For those who do not know - Enterprise Agreement is a three-year agreement for the supply of Microsoft products for enterprises with more than 250 jobs, with annual installments ).

Office365, sold as an expansion for EA, life is not difficult to classical resellers and other partners of Microsoft - well, add one more item on the subscription in addition to the Enterprise Desktop, the basic approach has not changed.
In fact, there was a ' reformat ', where instead of bought, say, Exchange, it is now possible to buy already in expanded form as Office365 ( obviously need to be replaced and the flow of revenue, and the corresponding target ).

But for small businesses (and there are enterprises with less than 250 jobs ), EA will not do (and proposed).

But the fundamental difference between cloud computing, as we were told the Western theorists, precisely in the fact that the cost of previously inaccessible to SMBs Enterprise- things like corporate email systems, collaboration and Web conferencing will be small and hence the influx of new customers and the same growth . T. e. - You need to do something Office365 available for small businesses.

The West was settled just - Microsoft itself began to sell BPOS (Office365), a partner - implementers pay advisor fee ( 12%, then 6%). A similar program exists in Russia, but, obviously, does not receive significant support from Microsoft, and described by me in the last year cause the bulk resellers not interested. Classic decaying process.

In Russia, Microsoft does not lead straight trading activity (and does not necessarily want to - not enough yet, and these problems ), so they chose 2 partners from among those who a) has a large customer base, b) is able to collect the small amount of money every month.

It turned out to be, and VimpelCom and SKB - circuit. It is logical and predictable - both large customer base.

How much do they sell subscriptions?.
I would venture to predict - for 2012 Vimpelcom to sell around 25,000 subscriptions, SKB Kontur - around 150,000 subscriptions.


Obviously, as soon as possible to join VimpelCom another operator of the Big Three, the third will wait until.

Sales for the second operator will also be at the level of 25,000 subscriptions. Well, I do not believe in their desire to do something other than rowing money on games of tariff. In SKB Kontur modestly and still earn from the extra two or three million will not give up.

Rostelecom with its national platform cloud tries to negotiate for source code and certification through the bodies, and the subsequent deployment of the national data centers. But it will happen after the elections in 2012 and after the second crisis, and therefore of no interest now.