Written by Kymber Lowe, Senior Director, Partner Digital Experiences and Programs, One Commercial Partner
The global pandemic has created opportunities for partners across all industries to deliver remote work services. As we detailed in our State of the Partner Ecosystem event, Microsoft partners are vital to powering digital transformation, which is now more important than ever. Last year, we saw customers move fast to enable their remote workforces, driving exceptional partner opportunities to deliver the required communications and collaboration workloads securely. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on remote work services was immediate and continues to resonate today because of the additional benefits that customers have since realized with adoption.
These accelerated transitions quickly evolved into more agile work environments, which opened more partner opportunities to manage and support the secure remote work services and help customers drive adoption and utilization after deployments. Lacking the skills or the time to take on and plan what is necessary for a successful migration, customer demand for secure remote work capabilities and services has risen to an all-time high.
In December 2020, MDC Research surveyed 1,173 Microsoft partners to determine the level of remote work services offered and the impact of COVID-19 on remote work services demand and to determine the revenue opportunities for remote work projects in the last 12 months. The table below shows median revenues in the last 12 months—per project and post project—for Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, and Windows Virtual Desktop projects. Note the follow-on revenue for additional post-project services is substantial and can even exceed project revenue.
To help partners determine the plausibility of adding a remote work practice, we have published the Secure Remote Work Practice Development Playbook, which provides guidance for assessing current capabilities and the investment and additional skills required to build and optimize the new services. Like our other Cloud Practice Development Playbooks, Secure Remote Work lays out the market opportunities and shows how to define and design a solution offer, along with the skills needed to build and market the services.