Develop a new portfolio of expertise. In these early stages of software development for the cloud, businesses will be seeking the best advice on what this means for their current and future technology investments. Stay ahead of the curve and help your customers understand what cloud computing and development means to their business today and how they can pivot and extend their investments to maximize its value tomorrow.

Deepen your customer relationships. SIs and VAPs have played an important role in deploying some of the most robust and flexible on-premises infrastructure available to businesses today. With that intimate knowledge of their customer’s on-premise solutions, SIs and VAPs can expect to deepen their relationships in bridging that investment to the cloud.

Focus on your core competencies. The Azure Services Platform provides on-demand capacity and is based on industry standards, so system integrators are free to focus their internal resources on developing IP or integrating disparate services critical to the success of their clients. Making it possible for solution providers to focus on delivering value rather than investing in cost centers such as data centers and network hardware, is a defining value of the Azure Services Platform.

Be efficient. With the ability to shift consumption of your IP off premises and into the cloud, the product life cycle is made easier. Resources once used to test deployment scenarios across multiple customer environments may be deployed against projects representing higher return for the SI’s or VAP’s business.