When trying to grow your Independent Software Vendor (ISV), it can be difficult to find the resources and support you need. Over the past few months, Microsoft has been really focusing on supporting ISVs grow their business. For starters, they’ve now got a dedicated ISV team in place who are focused on helping you grow your application through exclusive programmes to obtain Microsoft Azure funding and additional resources.

Accessing the relevant resources is key to helping your business unlock new opportunities with your application. Backed with extra capabilities, you’ll be able to achieve more – allowing you to try out new and exciting tools that will excel your application. Best of all, Microsoft has all the resources you need.

Recently, we’ve been helping businesses with applications across the UK leverage Microsoft resources by migrating to Azure. Having an Azure-based application will allow you to develop your app quicker, streamline your operations with ease and sell more than ever.

 

Expert-led guidance to developing your application

Microsoft have years of experience helping ISVs fast-track their business growth through the public cloud. They’ve consolidated this information and created the Solution Workspace – to help you turn those ideas into a fully-fledged solution. The Solution Workspace is a streamlined tool created to help you track an idea from its inception through to customer availability. It offers personalised steps and resources to help you identify how to improve your application. Plus Azure comes packed with the tools and resources you need to develop a successful application – meaning your staff don’t need to worry about creating overly complicated code.

 

Helping you reach new customers

When you migrate or build your application in Azure, Microsoft will support you in transforming your go-to-market strategy. They’ll provide you with a personalised consultation and access to customisable marketing assets they have available.

Building your application in Azure also carries significant benefits for your customers. Some of these benefits include, increased accessibility and better overall user experience through continuous updates and quicker development fixes. But it doesn’t stop there, Microsoft will also support you with executing the necessary sales and marketing activities,

 

Joint sales and marketing efforts with Microsoft

Finally, Microsoft will work with you on successfully taking your application to market through joint marketing activities. Microsoft has built the Azure Market Place, a platform where customers can find, try and buy applications to use. Publishing your app in the Azure Market Place will open your ISV up to exclusive joint marketing activities in over 140 countries. This will be a vital marketing channel for your ISV to leverage your application. You can find out more about the benefits of using Azure Market Place on Microsofts website.

Microsoft will personally identify any relevant applications for their sellers to engage with as part of their IP co-selling programme.

 

Ready excel your ISV with Microsoft?

Thanks to our ISV Specialist and Azure Expert MSP status, we have an exclusive relationship with Microsoft to help ISVs access exclusive funding and assessments. If you’re looking for any support with your application, get in touch with our experts.

Discover how to accelerate your journey to Azure with the Cloud Adoption Framework

The Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF Framework) is a collection of documentation, implementation guidance, best practices, and tools that are proven guidance from Microsoft designed to accelerate your cloud adoption journey. There are six stages to the CAF framework, and each stage has been crafted to help you accelerate your cloud adoption journey. Think of the CAF framework as your guide to making the most of your Azure investment.

It’s important to note that the CAF framework isn’t just for businesses that are new to the cloud, it can be used by businesses at any stage of their cloud journey. And we’re here to help you understand how you can start using it.

What are the six stages of the Cloud Adoption Framework?

1. Strategy
   Start by understanding your business objectives to identify how Azure can support them. Microsoft has created a Cloud Journey Tracker to help identify the adoption path suited for your business.
2. Plan
   Start aligning your people, processes, and technology to map out your cloud adoption plan. This is where you rationalize your current estate using the 5 R’s of application modernisation.
3. Ready
   This is where you prepare your environment using the Azure Setup Guide created by Microsoft. Once you’re all prepared it’s time to deploy your landing zone – a basic building block of any migration.
4. Adopt
   The adopt stage is split out into two parts – migrate and innovate. You can simply migrate your on-premises environment to the cloud. This is used when your workloads don’t warrant investment. Or you can innovate where you take advantage of cloud-native technologies to modernise your digital state using DevOps.
5. Govern
   Create benchmarks and implement a governance minimum variable product to stay on track. Working with an Azure Expert MSP can help you govern your environment, helping you maintain your progress.
6. Manage
   Monitor your environment through data collection and alerts. Manage it to ensure your following best practices to track your performance. And make sure you’ve created a resilient platform that can recover from any issues.

 

The Beginners Guide to the Cloud Adoption Framework

Want to find out more about the Cloud Adoption Framework? We’ve put together a comprehensive Beginners Guide to the Cloud Adoption Framework, to help you understand in more detail what you should be doing, things you should be considering and resources you should be utilising at each stage. Want to find out more? Read a copy of our guide today – written by our very own Azure Experts.

Cloud Direct celebrates another successful Microsoft Azure Expert MSP audit. With fewer than 100 Azure Expert MSP partners globally, and just a handful in the UK, this confirms Cloud Direct’s place as one of the UK’s leading Microsoft partners – and reassuring customers they are working with certified experts. Cloud Direct were one of the first to pass the audit in 2018, and have been leading the market ever since.

“Having been one of the first UK partners to undergo the audit and receive the Azure Expert MSP status in 2018, we are pleased to continue to pass the increasingly strict audit to retain the status and provide our customers with rock-star Microsoft Azure capabilities.” Brett Raynes, CEO, Cloud Direct.

The Microsoft Azure Expert MSP certification is Microsoft’s highest fidelity accolade.

The rigorous assessment looks at the skills and capabilities of Cloud Directs Azure consultants and support staff – focusing on infrastructure, applications and data management within Azure.  The audit also looks at the wider business structure to ensure Cloud Direct is built around continual improvement of its Azure managed services. This includes an audit of completed Azure projects and analysis of processes in hiring, training, finances, managed services, support, sales and customer on-boarding.

“Achieving and retaining the Microsoft Azure Expert MSP status is a huge achievement and one we take a lot of pride in. It allows us to deliver on our promise of providing ‘enterprise-class’ technology to the mid-market.

“We work tirelessly to ensure our managed services and automation for Microsoft Azure are world-class. This allows us to deliver high-velocity, high-impact Azure solutions to customers who don’t have the resources of a large enterprise organisation. Being able to do this with the highest level of recognition from Microsoft puts us in a unique position and one our mid-market customers truly appreciate and benefit from” Brett Raynes, CEO, Cloud Direct.

In this year’s audit, Cloud Direct was specifically noted for strengths across the business. The auditor’s report recognised:

• The breadth of technical skills across the widest customer base the auditor had experienced.
• Quality and consistency of design processes and documentation.
• The strategic commitment to training only seen in the best of breed service providers.
• Our integrated Provide™ Cloud Management Portal offering guided and advanced Azure service deployment, spend forecasting and a wide set of service health reporting capabilities.

Ready to work with an Azure Expert MSP? Get in contact.

Over the past five years, the way businesses use the cloud for their applications has changed dramatically – making it safe to say technology has transformed the way applications are made. With customers relying on SaaS solutions and cloud-based start-ups popping up left right and centre, it makes now a perfect time to migrate your application to the cloud. But where do you start?

Application Rationalization is the first step in your migration. Microsoft defines it as; the process of evaluating assets to determine the best way to migration or modernise each asset in the cloud. The best way to analyse your applications environment is by using what Gartner articulately coined as the five R’s of application modernisation – this will help you choose the best path for your migration.

So, when you’re looking to modernise application make sure you use the rationalization approach that fits your long-term strategy, motivations, and current state environment. Ready to explore the five R’s? Let’s jump in.

Rehost

Rehosting an application, more commonly known as a ‘lift and shift’, makes the least change to the architecture of the application. It is the simplest migration there is as it involves you moving your application from one environment to another. Rehosting your application is suitable for a legacy migration or if you have an IT team with limited cloud knowledge.

It’s best to rehost when you’re looking to move fast or on-prem is costing your business too much.

Refactor

Refactoring an application is when you refactor the code to open your ISV up to new business opportunities. This doesn’t mean making any major overhauls to the code, just updating a few bits here and there to optimise your application.

Once your application has been refactored, your ISV will have greater cloud efficiency, giving you access to better resources, speed, optimised costs and the ability to better manage your operations. Once your ISV has refactored your application you will be able to leverage Microsoft tools such as Azure SQL Database Managed Instances, Azure Container Services, Azure’ App Services, Azure Functions and Logic Apps.

It’s best to refactor when creating a custom application or you don’t want to create or maintain infrastructure.

Rearchitect

Before you can even start thinking about moving to the cloud, you need to make sure your application is cloud compatible. Rearchitecting an application is when you completely re-write your application to better fit in the cloud. This is usually the case for a legacy or ageing applications that aren’t compatible with the latest cloud providers.

The four key reasons why you may want to rearchitect your application are:

• Your application is cloud-compatible, but not cloud-native
• Improve your applications scale and agility
• Making it easier to adopt new cloud capabilities
• If you use a mix of technology stacks

Rebuild

Sometimes, applications aren’t worth further investment as they don’t meet the businesses current needs and are now unsupported or misalign with the current business process. If this is the case, then it’s best if your ISV rebuilt their application with a new code base that will align with a cloud-native approach. This typically involves your ISV leaving the old application and rebuilding it from new using the Azure Platform as a Services (PaaS) such as, Azure Functions, Logic Apps and Azure SQL Database.

So, if you’re planning to scale your application and futureproofing it using the latest cloud technologies then a rebuilding approach is right for you.

Replace

When building your application, you would have used the best technology and approach available at the time. But you know better than anyone that technology can get outdated quickly, particularly if it isn’t being maintained and keeping up with industry best practices.

It’s best to replace when you don’t want to invest in a development team to revive your application.

 

Five R’s of application modernisation

So, what approach will you take?

Before modernising your application, you should apply the 5 R’s to help you make the right decision about your application. If you want help figuring out the best migration for your application or are looking for a partner to migrate with, simply get in touch with our application experts.

 

Migrating your application to Azure will unlock new markets and revenue opportunities for your business. By having a SaaS application you will have the capabilities to help your business achieve fearless growth. Having your application in Azure allows you to build, market and sell your solutions efficiently. And we’re here to show you exactly how.

Having the ability to build things quicker enables you to streamline operations and therefore have the ability to sell more. Here’s what this could look like for your application.

Sell more than ever

That’s right. Migrating your application into Azure will enable you to reach millions of new customers. Your application being in the cloud will become more accessible and appealing to new markets across the world.

Microsoft has resources and programs available to help accelerate your time to market, demand generation and business growth, – such as the Azure Marketplace. By uploading your application to the Azure Marketplace you’re allowing customers in over 140 countries to start using your app. Enabling you to transform your businesses go-to-market strategy.

Finally, all of that money you’ve saved by moving to the Azure and increasing efficiency no longer needs to be passed onto your customer – making your services more affordable for them. It’s a win-win situation.

Build things quicker

Azure provides you with the building blocks you need to create a powerful application. You’ll be able to reap all the benefits of tools available in Azure, such as Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure DevOps and Azure App Service. Plus Microsoft are investing a huge amount of time and money to developing their application services. Over the past year they’ve added 1000+ capabilities to support your application, including more pre-built and custom AI features. By having access to the latest Azure tools available, you’ll be able to bring functionality to your application that competitors haven’t even thought of yet.

Microsoft and Keystone published a whitepaper on some research they’ve done into ISVs, The Shift to SaaS: A high-value opportunity for ISVs. During this research they discover: “All of the ISVs interviewed explained that the combination of continuous product development methodologies and greater visibility into customer usage through app data collection have led to improved product development cycles, saving up to one-third of the time required for a typical product release.” The Shift to SaaS: A high-value opportunity for ISVs, Keystone, June, 2017

With a cloud-based application there will be no hardware maintenance, allowing your IT team to concentrate on the development of your app. Meaning you’ll be able to keep up with changing markets, trends and competitors – all whilst saving costs.

Streamline your operations

Moving to a cloud-based application will enable your ISV to streamline your operations, which will open your business up to plenty of opportunities.

“ISVs (who switch to SaaS) reported a range of efficiency gains depending on the complexity of the application and the ongoing maintenance responsibilities, with an average of a 26% improvement in engineering efficiency.” The Shift to SaaS: A high-value opportunity for ISVs, Keystone, June, 2017

A SaaS-based model application reduces the time it takes to maintain the infrastructure as Microsoft will do this for you. Passing any infrastructure maintenance onto your provider, enables your IT team to focus on what really matters – improving and updating your application. And what’s best is you will automatically have access to any security and functionality updates – allowing your IT team to have access to the lastest tools available. Your customers will be able to benefit from this too through better functionality and app capabilities.

Microsoft invests over $1 billion every year in cybersecurity to ensure your cloud-based application is secure, so you don’t have to. They provide your ISV with compliance framework that aligns vendors to country specific data management regulations – meaning you don’t have to worry about complex and changing regulations. Microsoft has the resources to help you keep innovating without using up your whole team. Allowing you to excel your application without burning your team out.

Ready to harness the power of Azure?

These are just a few of the benefits your application could see from migrating to Azure. If you want to talk to one of our Azure Experts to find out how you can leverage your application in the cloud, then simply get in touch.

 

Deciding on the right office suite for your business can be challenging. There are ultimately two key players to choose between – Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.

From the early 2000s, Microsoft dominated the world of productivity, until 2006 when Google came along and launched their suite of products. Since then Microsoft and Google have been the biggest rivals in the productivity space.

To help you decide which of these two office suite giants is best suited to your business, we put Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace side-by-side to see how they compare. Whilst on the surface they seem to be very similar in terms of functionality, once you scratch the surface there are some very different features that could sway your decision.

At a glance…

	Microsoft 365	Google Workspace
Deployment	Cloud and hybrid	Cloud
Offline access	Yes	Limited to certain applications
Real time collaboration	Yes	Yes
Desktop application access	Most plans	No
Online application access	Yes	Yes
Storage	From 50GB email and 1TB of drive storage per user	From 30GB combined email and drive storage per user

At a glance, the two products look similar, don’t they? But let’s take a deeper dive into the key differences between the solutions.

 

Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 was launched in 2011 to help “bring together” Microsoft’s existing productivity tools such as Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook into an “always up-to-date cloud service”. Recently,  Microsoft announced new licence changes, making Microsoft 365 the new Office 365, which now has over 200 million monthly active users world-wide.

Cloud storage

Migrating to Microsoft 365 takes your business into the cloud. And when moving into the cloud you want to ensure you have enough space to store all your businesses data. All Microsoft 365 business plans come with 1TB of OneDrive storage and 50GB of email storage per user, with the ability to buy more if needed.

Alongside their cloud storage, Microsoft offers hybrid solutions.

Applications

Microsoft 365 is an application powerhouse with some of the leading productivity tools to help your business achieve fearless growth.

Office applications:

• Word: Take your writing to the next level with the ability to collaborate with anyone from anywhere in real-time.
• Excel: Gain control of your data. You can view and edit a spreadsheet in real-time from any location, providing you with a better picture of your data.
• PowerPoint: Bring your A-game to your next presentation with PowerPoint. Have the ability to co-author with other presenters to present with confidence.
• SharePoint: Simply share and manage your organisation’s content in one place for seamless collaboration.
• OneDrive: Take your files with you. OneDrive allows you to save your files in the cloud so you can share and collaborate with employees from any device.

Communication tools:

• Outlook: Have a centralised application with a unified view of your email, calendar, contacts, and files. Keeping you more organised than ever before.
• Teams: Teams allows you to chat, meet, call, and collaborate in a centralised and secure system. On any device. No matter where you are. Find out how Teams compares to Google Hangouts.
• Yammer: Improve and enhance employee engagement on a professional social media platform. Start keeping your employees informed, aligned, and moving forward.

Security

Microsoft invests over $1 billion into their products’ security every year. Security is at the forefront of Microsoft’s mind, to ensure that your business is secure when using their products.

Some of the security features you can take advantage of are:

• Advanced Threat Protection (ATP): Guard your employees from any attack designed to compromise your business information. ATP will provide you with; attachment scanning, AI analysis to identify and remove threatening messages and automatic link scanning on any emails to ensure it’s not part of a phishing attack.
• Data Loss Prevention (DLP): DLP will automatically identify any sensitive information (for example credit card details, security numbers and passport number) to prevent sharing this information with anyone outside your organisation.
• Multi Factor Authentication (MFA): Enabling MFA requires employees to provide multiple forms of certification to prove their identity when signing into their account. MFA means your employees accounts are 9% less likely to be compromised.
• Microsoft 365 security centre: The security centre enables you to monitor and manage all identities, data, devices, apps and infrastructure all in one place.
• Intune: Manage your devices and applications with ease with an integrated endpoint management platform. With Intune you can automate deployment, provisioning, policy management, app delivery and updates.
• Secure Score: Microsoft’s Secure Score allows you to improve your businesses security posture through intelligent insights and guidance. Read our Beginners Guide to Microsoft’s Secure Score here.

Price

When creating the Microsoft 365 solutions, Microsoft created subscriptions that would be suitable for everyone. In this they considered the cost when creating pricing to ensure they were affordable. Meaning you’ll get more bang for your buck.

Plan	Cost per user per month
Microsoft 365 Business Basic	£3.80
Microsoft 365 Business Standard	£9.40
Microsoft 365 Business Premium	£15.10
Microsoft 365 F3	£7.50
Microsoft 365 E3	£28.10
Microsoft 365 E5	£48.10

 

Google Workspace

Google Workspace has now passed 2 billion users, but only 5 million of those are reaping the benefits of the paid platform.

Cloud storage

Googles cloud storage starts off much lower on their Starter plan at 30GB but dramatically jumps up to unlimited on the Enterprise plan – as does Microsoft 365 with their enterprise plans). So, it depends on the sort of storage your business needs.

Applications

The applications Google have included in Google Workspace are very similar to the ones Microsoft include in their subscriptions.

Connect

Google Workspace allows you to connect with other employees with ease. Within the solution you’ll have access to:

• Gmail: Gmail is a secure and smart inbox, allowing you to do more with your inbox.
• Calendar: Better manage your time and plan with the calendar function
• Google Hangouts: Google Hangouts is a platform that allows you to seamlessly video call and message with other employees. Find out how Google Hangouts compares to Microsoft Teams.
• Google Drive: Store all of your Google Docs, Sheets and Slides all in one place that allows you to easily share them with your wider team.

Create

Google Workspace prides itself on allowing businesses to create whatever you need to get the job done. You’ll have access to three key solutions to help you be productive:

• Docs: Google Docs is a cloud-native word processing application that allows you to collaborate with other employees in real time.
• Sheets: This is Googles version of Microsoft Excel and allows you to manage and organise all your data in an online spreadsheet.
• Slides: Google Slides enables you to create slide decks in the cloud.

Security

Security is at the heart of any decision when looking into new software. And Google have the basics in place across all pricing plans with two-step verification, Group-based policy controls, Advanced and Protection Programme and Endpoint management. All of this will provide you with the basic security features you need to start keeping your business secure – but many businesses want something more than that. And the higher Google Workspace plan you’re on, the more security features you’ll have access to – for example Vault and Data Loss Protection.

Price

Google has created four clear pricing plans to make it easy for businesses to select the one right for them. Whilst there is a clear difference between the plans the key difference is the amount of storage you have and the features you have access to.

Plans	Cost per user per month
Business Starter	£4.60
Business Standard	£9.20
Business Plus	£13.80
Enterprise	No standard pricing

 

What’s the right office solution for me?

For us there’s a clear winner. And that’s Microsoft 365 – thanks to its security capabilities and variety of plans to suite any business of any size.

Cloud storage: This is the bread and butter of a cloud productivity suite. You need to have enough storage in order for your data to be securely saved. Microsoft offers a generous amount of storage with the ability to add more if and when needed, but Google allows you to go that extra mile and will allow you to have unlimited storage if needed.

Security: No one gets security like Microsoft does. With their huge yearly investment into security, its safe to say they’re in the best position to keep you secure. Whilst Google has fantastic security tools available, some of which are very similar to the ones in Microsoft 365, Microsoft storms ahead with their comprehensive security solutions.

Price: Microsoft have created a variety of pricing plans to help suite every business. Whilst Google have created four strong pricing plans, Microsoft wins us over with their vast range of plans suited for everyone.

Office applications: In terms of features, applications and tools, there’s not much in it. From the surface they come with variations of the same tools, but within the tools the functionality is quite different. Did you know, if you’re using Google Workspace you need basic office applications, such as Excel and Word, in order to collaborate with third-parties – meaning you could be paying twice if you go for Google over Microsoft.

 

Get in touch

So do you want to find out more around what solution would be best for your business? Get in touch with our experts to find a plan that’s best suited for your business needs.

The 13^th of October is a big day for Microsoft as SharePoint 2010 is coming to end of extended support and Office 2010 support is coming to an end. During this guide, we will be highlighting what this means for your business and what your next steps should be.

 

Office 2010: End of Support

Office 2010 is going End of Support on 13^th October. Meaning Microsoft will no longer be providing technical support of software and security updates. In the last 10 years, Microsoft has come a long way – with the release of Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams and numerous other cloud-based productivity applications. They’ve kept innovating in the cloud, where the market just keeps on moving.

In Microsoft’s announcement about Office 2010 going end of support they stated:

Microsoft will not take any active measures to block legacy versions of the Office client from connecting to Office 365 services, but these older clients may encounter performance and/or reliability issues over time.

So what should you do?

Using Office 2010 will leave you vulnerable to security attacks and will put your data at risk due to the lack of updates and support from Microsoft. Meaning there’s never been a better time to upgrade to Microsoft 365.

By upgrading, you’ll benefit from

• Security updates and tools such as EMS
• The ability to access your data anytime, from any device
• The power of the applications in Microsoft 365. Co-author and edit your documents, slide decks and spreadsheets all in real-time
• The sharing capabilities of Microsoft 365. Collaborate with other employees by making edits and feedback within your file

And those are just a few of the endless benefits of upgrading to Microsoft 365. To find out more about Microsoft 365 get in contact with our experts.

 

SharePoint 2010: End of Extended Support

From 13^th October, SharePoint 2010 will reach the end of its extended support – meaning you’ll be left in the dark. With no support. No security updates. And the chance your operating system support SharePoint 2010 is coming end of life, or already has.

Microsoft has said that; Lack of compliance with various standards and regulations can be devastating.  This may include regulatory and industry standards for which compliance can no longer be achieved.  For example, lack of compliance with Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards might mean companies such as Visa and MasterCard will no longer do business with you.  Or, the new cost of doing business will include paying catastrophic penalties and astronomically high transaction fees.  In the worst case, lack of compliance can even result in lost business.

So, what should you do?

You can make the most of the up to date version of SharePoint Online in Microsoft 365. Allowing your business to benefit from:

• Access your intranet on the go through a mobile device
• Regular new features and comprehensive security updates
• The ability to personalise your site

Find out more about Microsoft 365 by getting in contact with our experts.

For the eighth year in a row, Cloud Direct has achieved G-Cloud status.

We’re excited to announce we’ve added nine new cloud solutions to our G-Cloud 12 offering, the UK government’s Digital Marketplace, plus our expert cloud consultancy and managed support services.

The Digital Marketplace is a government-regulated tool for public sector organisations and agencies to find specialist providers for technical digital projects. With almost a decade of experience as one of the earliest adopters of G-Cloud, our 21 technologies, consultancy and support services have been expertly designed to support organisations such as local government, health/education/emergency services, defence and not-for-profit organisations.

Here is the full list of cloud services available from Cloud Direct on G-Cloud 12, under our legal name On Direct Business Services Limited:

Technologies

Azure Migration Service
Azure Landing Zone & Platform Foundation Deployment
Azure CSP Transfer and Optimisation
Windows Virtual Desktop Deployment
Microsoft 365 & Office 365 Migration
Security and Compliance Kickstart
Teams Voice Migration
Skype for Business Upgrade
Teams in-a-Box Deployment
Backup for Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive
Citrix-on-Azure
Disaster Recovery as a Service via Azure Site Recovery
Managed Backup
Cloud Anti-virus

Consultancy

Azure Scale-Up Assessment
Cloud Migration Assessment

Support

Azure Managed Service and Support
Azure Sentinel Monitoring and Alerting Service
Microsoft 365 & Office 365 Managed Service
Desktop Support
Server Support

Brett Raynes, CEO of Cloud Direct, says:

“We work with several government organisations who enjoy the increased level of security and accreditation G-Cloud 12 awards us. Our business and the services we provide are all about enabling transformation and as we expect to grow, we plan to increase our customer base amongst public sector organisations. The stringent G-Cloud framework shows our continued commitment to providing first-class service and support to our clients.”