Last year at this time, Jamison West, founder and CEO of Arterian, a large, Seattle-based IT services company, predicted that Microsoft would eventually come around and open up sales of Surface to more partners. “The direct strategy by Microsoft is a huge disappointment for us,” said West to writer James E. Gaskin, for a story he was writing at the time. “But I fully believe the company will correct that.“
As announced at WPC and noted in Microsoft’s Surface blog in a post by Brian Hall, General Manager, Microsoft Surface, “We are expanding our channel and will go from having a few hundred partners selling and servicing Surface to a few thousand globally in the coming months.” Hall further noted that Redmond is looking for resellers or integrators “with strong hardware capabilities.”
In time, more partners will be authorized to sell Surface. “All Partners may submit a request [for authorization] but only ‘selected’ partners will be chosen—[it’s] a phased-in approach,” says Dave Seibert, CIO of IT Innovators Inc., in Irvine, Calif.
Seibert, who is also a channel advocate, frequent industry speaker, and creator of the SMB Technology Network and SMB TechFest, is bullish about Microsoft in general and the Surface announcement in particular. “Microsoft continues to empower its partners with additional revenue streams,” he says. “The latest is expanding its Authorized Device Reseller (ADR) program. There has been great demand and an addition of partners is long overdue.†The combination of Surface devices and the launch of Windows 10 will allow partners to provide more solutions directly to their clients and expand their markets.”
Partners who wish to become ADRs should contact an Authorized Device Distributor through the Microsoft Partner Network Device Partner Portal.
