With the Nordic vacation season already over I took the opportunity to sit down with our Business Development Manager and Atea group Modern Workplace and Security lead Dagne Grass and talk about here experiences and thoughts after attending Microsoft Inspire earlier this summer.
It’s been a little bit over a month since you attended Microsoft Inspire can you please share your impressions?
As the name states, it really is an inspirational event with around 50 000 attendees and a lot of news from Microsoft. And of course, some things have changed in M365, Security, and Azure, so it’s a good thing that Inspire that is partner-focused happen before Ignite which is more end customer targeted, so the partners have time to prepare for the coming changes before Microsoft announces them to the customers.
What, in your opinion, are the most important things to take away for Atea as one of Microsofts biggest partners?
I would say that the most valuable sessions for Atea were focused around our Microsoft business strategic areas, like Azure, Modern Workplace and Security as well as Teams and Collaboration, which will be big this year. And another huge thing is that this is the first year that Microsoft has released a competencies partnership around security. It’s going to be much work for Atea from all of the countries, but I think that it would help us immensely in different types of tenders. There are 2 types of partnerships – silver and gold, and the silver one means that you are a security partner in either Modern Workplace or Azure, and the gold means that you are a security partner in both. And of course, we would want to be a gold partner.
And for Atea Global Services as a Managed Service Provider what are the areas that we should focus more on in the following year?
Definitely, we have a lot of place to grow when talking about Teams. As developing a service around Teams requires a very different mindset than when doing the same for end-user services that are more technical. As well I would say that security is a big thing to focus on, so we are able to provide our customers with a continued service as something that remains after the Atea consultants. As well as helping Atea to sell SW as services are the ones that help create long term relationships with clients.
Are there areas where you see that Atea is in the front lines already?
Yes, definitely! More so the work that we do with different verticals. Atea has a very well developed public sector area with the various smart solutions that we provide like smart city and smart municipality projects that we are building as a part of our azure framework. In these areas, Microsoft is the one approaching us and asking us to share our experience. We will be actually doing just that when attending the Microsoft Digital Success Academy this September in Rome. And if we look at it from an Atea Global Services perspective, Microsoft has always been very impressed by our managed services possibilities and the way how well they are offered with the necessary infrastructure as well as the seamless link between consultants and services where the customer more often doesn’t even realize where one ends and the other begins.
If we go back to the subject of Teams and Collaboration – where do you see the perspectives in this for Atea Global Services?
One of the things that I would definitely see is managed services around smart meeting rooms. It’s also something that we have done previously around the old SurfaceHubs and could potentially do again with the new ones, as Surface is also a big part of the Atea business in the HW area. It could also be user adoption as more of a soft service. And of course, security around Teams that is something between user adoption and being a managed service.
Could you share something more about security around Teams?
No, you’ll just have to wait and see 🙂
I’ve heard that Atea groups SMB team was represented in this years Inspire – what could you tell us about that?
In general, the Atea Groups Microsoft team has never been this big, and we in AGS have never before plugged in so much in the Atea Group Microsoft message, and I’m thrilled about where we are now.
The keynotes this year were especially amazing! And in general, what technology can do nowadays is very impressive. I would even go as far as to say that it’s quite insane. As well as the fact that MS is going beyond their common areas into areas like gaming and retail is very much inspirational. As well as the focus on Teams and Microsoft have reach Gartner level when if they say that something will happen by 2020, it will happen just because they have said that it will.
– Daniela Rubule, Marketing Manager at Atea Global Services
With the Nordic vacation season already over I took the opportunity to sit down with our Business Development Manager and Atea group Modern Workplace and Security lead Dagne Grass and talk about here experiences and thoughts after attending Microsoft Inspire earlier this summer.
It’s been a little bit over a month since you attended Microsoft Inspire can you please share your impressions?
As the name states, it really is an inspirational event with around 50 000 attendees and a lot of news from Microsoft. And of course, some things have changed in M365, Security, and Azure, so it’s a good thing that Inspire that is partner-focused happen before Ignite which is more end customer targeted, so the partners have time to prepare for the coming changes before Microsoft announces them to the customers.
What, in your opinion, are the most important things to take away for Atea as one of Microsofts biggest partners?
I would say that the most valuable sessions for Atea were focused around our Microsoft business strategic areas, like Azure, Modern Workplace and Security as well as Teams and Collaboration, which will be big this year. And another huge thing is that this is the first year that Microsoft has released a competencies partnership around security. It’s going to be much work for Atea from all of the countries, but I think that it would help us immensely in different types of tenders. There are 2 types of partnerships – silver and gold, and the silver one means that you are a security partner in either Modern Workplace or Azure, and the gold means that you are a security partner in both. And of course, we would want to be a gold partner.
And for Atea Global Services as a Managed Service Provider what are the areas that we should focus more on in the following year?
Definitely, we have a lot of place to grow when talking about Teams. As developing a service around Teams requires a very different mindset than when doing the same for end-user services that are more technical. As well I would say that security is a big thing to focus on, so we are able to provide our customers with a continued service as something that remains after the Atea consultants. As well as helping Atea to sell SW as services are the ones that help create long term relationships with clients.
Are there areas where you see that Atea is in the front lines already?
Yes, definitely! More so the work that we do with different verticals. Atea has a very well developed public sector area with the various smart solutions that we provide like smart city and smart municipality projects that we are building as a part of our azure framework. In these areas, Microsoft is the one approaching us and asking us to share our experience. We will be actually doing just that when attending the Microsoft Digital Success Academy this September in Rome. And if we look at it from an Atea Global Services perspective, Microsoft has always been very impressed by our managed services possibilities and the way how well they are offered with the necessary infrastructure as well as the seamless link between consultants and services where the customer more often doesn’t even realize where one ends and the other begins.
If we go back to the subject of Teams and Collaboration – where do you see the perspectives in this for Atea Global Services?
One of the things that I would definitely see is managed services around smart meeting rooms. It’s also something that we have done previously around the old SurfaceHubs and could potentially do again with the new ones, as Surface is also a big part of the Atea business in the HW area. It could also be user adoption as more of a soft service. And of course, security around Teams that is something between user adoption and being a managed service.
Could you share something more about security around Teams?
No, you’ll just have to wait and see 🙂
I’ve heard that Atea groups SMB team was represented in this years Inspire – what could you tell us about that?
In general, the Atea Groups Microsoft team has never been this big, and we in AGS have never before plugged in so much in the Atea Group Microsoft message, and I’m thrilled about where we are now.
The keynotes this year were especially amazing! And in general, what technology can do nowadays is very impressive. I would even go as far as to say that it’s quite insane. As well as the fact that MS is going beyond their common areas into areas like gaming and retail is very much inspirational. As well as the focus on Teams and Microsoft have reach Gartner level when if they say that something will happen by 2020, it will happen just because they have said that it will.
– Daniela Rubule, Marketing Manager at Atea Global Services