Microsoft Inspire 2017 Recap

Microsoft Inspire 2017 was held in early July at our nation’s capital. Formerly known as Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), Inspire is held annually as Microsoft kicks off its fiscal year and is the platform by which it attempts to drive deeper engagements with its business partners and introduce its latest and greatest products and services.

The Altaris Cloud Team was there to experience a week filled with networking opportunities and keynotes by Microsoft’s executives who provided the insight into what’s new and what’s next.

While those on stage echoed themes about Microsoft’s Partner-First decisions, the unveiling of Microsoft 365, and how AI is becoming intrinsic in every application built within the intelligent cloud, the conversations during the networking and collaboration sessions focused on a topic you won’t see in the headlines: Compliance.

Do a Google search for the news coming out of Microsoft Inspire 2017 and you’ll find the usual commentary on Microsoft’s strides in cloud services and its strategies to grow its footprint with its business partners and their shared customers. But for the SPLA Partners in attendance, while that’s all fine and good, dialog was rampant on how Microsoft has been ramping up its compliance activities considerably on a worldwide basis over the past few years and they aren’t slowing down yet.

Microsoft also rolled out SAM for Hosting to its SAM Partners, although that didn’t make headlines either but clearly indicates Microsoft’s continued commitment to compliance activities in the coming years. SAM isn’t just for traditional volume licensing customers anymore; service providers are now going to be targeted in addition to their annual chance at the SPLA audit lottery. Do you feel lucky?

The consensus was that it’s a matter of when, not if, Microsoft’s compliance teams will come calling in Fiscal Year 2018. The worrisome sentiments were around reporting correctly and how to defend against budget-busting findings. The SPLA partners that found themselves staring at audit reports with big numbers were forced to make difficult decisions coming out of their respective compliance engagements, according to those the Altaris Cloud Team spoke with.

SPLA partners reported having to renegotiate contracts with customers because of the increased reporting obligations on their monthly usage reports. Others were forced to seek out external financing to remediate their license gaps and now face large payments over the next two or three years. One partner reported laying off two staff members to allow his company the chance to continue its hosting business.

Now that another Microsoft fiscal year is upon us, another round of SPLA audits are on the horizon. Compliance revenue has become big business, and while Microsoft certainly is making massive strides in the digital realm of the partner space with Azure AI and Azure Stack offerings, the luster of big announcements is tarnished by the fact most SPLA partners don’t know how to report their hosting environments correctly. And both Microsoft and the SPLA partners know it.

Altaris Cloud has more than 25 years of combined SPLA licensing experience. The Altaris team is comprised of ex-Microsoft personnel who built the compliance programs and strategies Microsoft uses to extract compliance dollars from its partners, making Altaris uniquely proficient in providing SPLA partners the program’s most effective strategies and business recommendations.

Contact Altaris today to learn how we empower SPLA partners to reduce costs and risks and maximize profits and scalability.

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