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WHAT IS IT? VALUE PROPOSITION VALUE FOR PARTNERS ROADMAP PRICING, LICENSING & OFFERS
KEY SALES SCENARIOS COMPETE CUSTOMER CONCERNS AND OBJECTIONS FEATURES AND BENEFITS
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

TARGET CUSTOMERS

WHAT IS IT?

The Microsoft Azure technology platform is an open and flexible cloud platform that companies can use to build, deploy, and
manage applications quickly across a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers. Organizations can build applications using
any language, tool, or framework. They can also integrate public cloud applications with an existing IT environment.

VALUE PROPOSITION

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1. Great UX: The Microsoft Azure developer and user experience is unique because it spans a cross-browser Management Portal that
responds to cloud patterns, a DevOps Dashboard, open and documented RESTful application programming interfaces (APIs), and

tools like the open source software development kits (SDKs) for different languages like Java or PHP and the Azure Command Line
Tools. Developers and IT Pros will both appreciate a nonintrusive, open, flexible, and solid experience.

2. Hybrid and ready for any device: A common set of core-mature technologies like Hyper-V technology, the Microsoft System
Center, Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft Azure Pack enable consistent experiences on-premises and beyond, with open source

supported up and down the stack. Microsoft Azure front-end solutions have been developed for multiple devices such as Azure

Mobile Services supporting Android, iOS, Windows Phone, the Windows Store, HTML5/JavaScript applications, PhoneGap/Cordova,
and also Xamarin.

3. Succeed faster in your market: Why settle for hello world when you can say hello to your target market? Microsoft Azure has
Quick, Custom, and Gallery modes to make it easier to launch, try, and succeed faster. Deploy from existing source control,
GitHub, or popular CMS like Joomla or Drupal directly to websites. Also, select from hundreds of Linux virtual machines with

preinstalled software that a growing community maintains. In addition, download jumpstart projects for the Mobile Service for
Android, iOS, Windows, Xamarin, and more.

4. Go beyond IaaS in your own terms: CentOS, Oracle Linux, Ubuntu, and SUSE are supported Linux images. More than 700 Linux

images are available at VM Depot. But when developers want to break free from the virtual machine, they can use websites, Mobile
Services, Microsoft SQL and NoSQL databases, Media, Identity, Service Bus, Hadoop, and more! You can use your Linux SysAdmin

skills, your Node.js kung-fu, or your DevOps zen to think outside the virtual machine and architect great solutions. Microsoft is in the
leader quadrant for platform as a service (PaaS) and support of environments such as node.js, java, PHP, and Python, according to
Gartner in January 2014.

5. Effortless scalability and geo-replication: You can connect across services for the level of control and experience that you want

Plus all of the services are available in several regions worldwide. With the autoscale functionalities on virtual machines and websites,
developers can focus on their solutions whether they use Linux, PHP, Java, or any other open source technology.

VALUE FOR PARTNERS

Partners with more than half of their business from cloud generate 1.6 times more recurring revenue than other partners. IDC

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InfoDoc, Sponsored by Microsoft. "Successful Cloud Partners 2.0: What IT Solution Providers Need to Know to Build High-Performing Cloud
Businesses" April 2014.
72 percent of customers are leveraging cloud for their applications-from pilots to production apps. 451 Research, Hosting and Cloud
Study, 2014

Microsoft Azure offers:

A clear path to success with a fast track to new lines of business.

A flexible platform.

A familiar ecosystem designed to help get partner solutions and services to market quickly.

Flexible pricing options and support for partners serving a range of customers, from small and midsize business to enterprise
organizations.

Microsoft offers:

A large customer base.

2:3 servers worldwide run on the Windows Server operating system.

22M servers currently running Windows Server 2003; $6.1B in upgrade opportunities.
66 percent of enterprise seats covered with System Center.

93 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies use Active Directory.

Massive hybrid cloud opportunities.

One complete platform from on-premises to the cloud.

End-to-end solutions on a consistent platform across private, hybrid and public clouds.

Broad cross-selling opportunities across infrastructure, apps, devices and cloud services.
Built-in capabilities enable profitable and competitive solutions.

Continuous investments in partner business.

System integrators (SI) partner opportunities through partner programs such as Cloud OS Network (COSN).

ROADMAP

Infrastructure as a Service

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Multifactor Authentication: Safeguard access to data and applications by strengthening traditional sign-in approaches.

Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Protects Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager private clouds during a service outage.
Backup: Enables server data to be backed up to, and recovered from, Microsoft Azure to help protect against data loss and
corruption.

Application Access Enhancements: Enables Microsoft Azure Active Directory identities to integrate across both Microsoft and thirdparty, cloud-hosted applications.

Premium for SQL Database: Delivers greater performance for cloud applications by reserving a fixed amount of capacity for a
database, including its built-in secondary replicas.

Monitor, Alert, and Auto Scale: Better understand the health of applications.

PRICING, LICENSING & OFFERS

Microsoft Azure is charged based on the use of individual services that are a part of the Microsoft Azure platform. Each service has
its own unique meter with a unique charge structure. This can range from the hours of use, gigabytes stored, number of users, or

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volume of content processed. Customers can either pay by how much of these resources they consume on a monthly basis or by
purchasing commitment offers for additional payment predictability. At this time, Microsoft Azure licenses can be purchased via credit
card or corporate purchase order (subject to a minimum purchase threshold).

See licensing information by scenario in the individual Sales Scenario topics within Gear Up:
SharePoint Test/Development Infrastructure on Microsoft Azure

SQL Server Business Continuity and/or Backup on Microsoft Azure

SQL Server Testing Infrastructure on Microsoft Azure
StorSimple-Hybrid Cloud Storage

Customers have two licensing programs in which to purchase the Microsoft Azure platform. They can purchase it directly by selecting

one of the offers in the Microsoft Online Services Program (MOSP). Customers can also purchase the Microsoft Azure platform services

through the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) program by signing a Server & Cloud Enrollment amendment to their existing EA or
signing a Microsoft Azure-Only Server & Cloud Enrollment based on expected use. The customer receives the same rates for any use in
excess of their up-front commitment. If the customer goes more than 50 percent beyond commitment, quarterly billing (as opposed to
annual) is initiated.

TARGET CUSTOMERS

The most productive way to target customers is by sales scenario.

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For example, the primary characteristics of the SQL Server Testing Infrastructure sales scenario are >10 SQL Server licenses, MSDN
developer program subscribers, Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS) users. Secondary characteristics are >15
Microsoft System Center server management licenses (hybrid cloud enabler), and Amazon Web Services (AWS) customer.

For the SharePoint Test/Development Infrastructure sales scenario, primary characteristics are >4 SharePoint Server licenses and
Upgrading to SharePoint 2010/2013 from legacy versions. Secondary characteristics are >15 Microsoft System Center server
management licenses (hybrid cloud enabler), MSDN developer program subscribers, Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
(TFS) users, and Amazon Web Services customer.
For the SQL Server Business Continuity and/or Backup on Microsoft Azure sales scenario, the primary characteristic is >20 SQL Server
licenses (EE licenses for a disaster recovery [DR] scenario) with a secondary characteristic of Amazon Web Services (AWS) customer.

Understanding which sales scenario you are discussing with a customer will allow you to match the right probing question to a buyer
and profile. Reference each sales scenario in Gear Up for a list of qualifying questions by buyer and profile and information on how
Microsoft Azure helps.
Sales Scenarios:

SharePoint Test/Development Infrastructure on Microsoft Azure

SQL Server Business Continuity and/or Backup on Microsoft Azure

SQL Server Testing Infrastructure on Microsoft Azure
StorSimple-Hybrid Cloud Storage

KEY SALES SCENARIOS

Core Microsoft Azure Sales Scenarios

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Hybrid Storage with Storsimple: Hybrid Cloud Storage helps customers efficiently manage their data by providing a practical journey
to the cloud while maintaining active data on-premises.
WS03 Upgrade and Testing on Microsoft Azure: The Windows Server 2003 operating system reaches end of support in July 2015,
giving customers a short time frame to test and deploy their apps on a supported operating system (Windows Server 2012).
Provisioning SharePoint Server Test and Development Infrastructure: Test and dev environments set up on virtual machines
residing on Microsoft Azure, where customers can provision faster and at a significantly lower cost.

SharePoint Server Deploy Dev Test: Helps customers take advantage of the Microsoft Azure scale, elasticity, and per-minute billing to
provide more agile and cost-effective dev and test labs.
SAP Dev, Test, and Training on Microsoft Azure: Microsoft Azure offers a low-cost and highly scalable deployment option for
customer SAP workloads.
Enterprise Web Apps Solution: Modernize the web application to run on Microsoft Azure.

Agility and Dev Ops: Scalable, on-demand cloud infrastructure empowers dev and test teams to be more agile, deliver faster, and
deliver higher quality.

Deploy, Test, Back Up, and DR SQL Server on Microsoft Azure: Any organization upgrading SQL Server can use a virtual machine
testing environment that resides on Microsoft Azure.
Business Intelligence (BI) SQL Server/SharePoint Server Deployment Solution: Run BI applications on Microsoft Azure
Infrastructure Services to provide seamless connectivity with on-premises data, applications, and identity.
Azure Mobile Applications Solution: Work with one provider to automate common data center tasks.

Dev and Test Environments: Scalable, on-demand cloud infrastructure empowers dev and test teams to be more agile, deliver faster,
and deliver higher quality.

Hybrid Identity Management with Enterprise Mobility Suite: Customers get an identity and access management solution for cloud
single sign-on (SSO).

COMPETE

Public Clouds are sets of infrastructure services that several vendors provide. The vendors include Amazon, Google, Rackspace, and
others. With these vendors, customers can purchase compute, storage, networking, and platform services on an as-needed basis.

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Increasingly, these services are being used to augment or replace on-premises systems, to augment capacity, and to handle Technical
Computing applications.

Microsoft Azure is Microsofts Public Cloud Offering, comprising both IaaS and PaaS. It is the foundation on which Microsofts CloudOS
vision is built.
Strategy for Competing in the Cloud

Identify the correct people within your account to talk to about the cloud. Likely these people are NOT in IT.
Land Microsoft Azure as the preferred platform for the cloud design point.

Establish Microsoft Azure as the preferred cloud service for developers using Windows 8 and Windows Phone.

Dispel FUD within your accounts about the Microsoft Azure ability to handle non-Windows workloads and advocate for Microsoft
Azure within your accounts.

CUSTOMER CONCERNS AND OBJECTIONS

See the table below for the suggested approach to customer concerns and objections.
Objection

Why should I choose

Microsoft over AWS?

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Suggested Approach

SQL Server full backup and DR to Microsoft Azure are out of the box; requires development to work on
Amazon.

Microsoft does not support SQL Server on AWS.

With Microsoft, customers get one point of support for SQL Server, Active Directory service, Windows
Server, and Microsoft Azure.

VHD virtual machines can be moved back and forth between Microsoft Azure and on-premises; AWS
locks customers into a proprietary AMI format.

We do not think
Microsoft policy is to be the most transparent about security and compliance policies, and certifications
Microsoft Azure meets
on the public-facing Microsoft Azure Trust Center.
our security and
compliance requirements. Testing workload usually has limited security/compliance requirements.
Some applications/workloads may be better to host on-premises. Microsoft supports a hybrid solution,
with symmetry between on-premises applications and those on the public cloud.

We are unsure if a
To deal with technical objections:
feature/ capability will
Email an issue to winazrtt@microsoft.com.
work on Microsoft Azure.

Escalate to a Microsoft Azure technical sales professional (TSP).

Engage a local specialist team unit (STU) to evaluate a proof of concept (POC).

FEATURES AND BENEFITS

Azure Batch: With Azure Batch, customers can run large-scale parallel and Technical Computing workloads.

Business Continuity: Using both Azure Site Recovery and Azure Backup, customers can protect critical applications and data with a
scalable, secure, and affordable cloud service.
Desktop Virtualization: Deploy Windows client apps in the cloud and run on any device.
Azure Backup: Simple and reliable server backup to the cloud.
Azure Websites: Deploy and scale web apps quickly.

API Management: Publish APIs to developers, partners, and employees securely and at scale.
Azure Integration: Seamlessly integrate the enterprise and the cloud.
Mobile Services: Build and host the back end for any mobile app.

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Azure Mobile Engagement: Maximize mobile apps use and revenue with Azure Mobile Engagement, a software as a service (SaaS)
-delivered, data-driven user engagement platform.
Azure CDN: Deliver content to users through a powerful and comprehensive network of global data centers.

Azure Media Services: Azure Media Services provides an end-to-end cloud-based workflow for encoding, encrypting, streaming,
distributing, and monetizing premium video content.
Document DB: Managed NoSQL document database as a service (DaaS).
SQL Database: Managed Relational SQL DaaS.

Azure Search: Azure Search is a search as a service that helps customers build sophisticated search experiences into web and mobile
applications.

HD Insight: Provision managed Hadoop clusters.

Machine Learning: Powerful, cloud-based predictive analytics.

Express Route: Dedicated private network fiber connections to Microsoft Azure.

Multifactor Authentication: Safeguard access to data and apps with an extra level of authentication.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Is Microsoft Azure built to work only with other Microsoft applications and tools?

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Microsoft Azure is designed to work with both Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies. The service supports Representational State
Transfer (REST), SOAP, and XML protocols and most development languages, including PHP and Ruby. The experience of working with
Microsoft products and development tools is a smooth one. In addition, Microsoft will support development on other platforms and
programming languages and will invest in a strong development ecosystem for its service platform.
Is Microsoft Azure a hosted version of Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V?

Microsoft Azure uses a derivative of Windows Server and Hyper-V technology for some portions of the service, but it is significantly
customized to create a cloud service running in Microsoft data centers. Microsoft Azure started with the shipping versions of the code
base and made modifications. Most of these modifications were made to optimize for the cloud design point and take advantage of
Microsofts homogeneous data center environment. Although many of the modifications were specifically for Microsoft Azure as an
Internet-scale service in Microsoft data centers, some of the innovations are suitable for Microsofts broader customer base and will be
incorporated into future releases of the products.
Can I use a trial of Microsoft Azure and estimate how much it will cost?

Microsoft offers US$200 of Microsoft Azure free as part of a one-month trial. With this trial, companies can build what they want, scale
as needed, and get full access with no strings attached. Additionally, MSDN subscribers receive monthly credit to use on any Microsoft
Azure service at discounted hourly rates. Also, no additional charge exists for using MSDN software on Microsoft Azure for development
and testing. Microsoft partners can join the Cloud Essential program and receive a monthly credit to use on any Microsoft Azure service.
For estimating cost, Microsoft provides at-a-glance pricing tools and a pricing calculator on the Microsoft Azure site.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Infopedia SMSG Ready Hub View

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Infopedia All Documents View

Internal Sites: http://Azure and http://AzureSales/

Azure Roadmap: http://infopedia/docstore/pages/kcdoc.aspx?k=KC02-23-33449

Web Insights Tool: http://infopedia/docstore/pages/kcdoc.aspx?k=KC00-15-204586

STB Account Grid: http://infopedia/docstore/pages/kcdoc.aspx?k=KC02-23-8127

Azure Technical Certification: http://infopedia/SMSG/Pages/Azure-Technical-Certification-home.aspx

Pitch Perfect Certification: http://infopedia/SMSG/Pages/pitchPerfect.aspx

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