The IT Nerd

I recently had the opportunity to chat with Andy Sanborn, Senior Business Strategy Manager at Microsoft in regards to Microsoft’s focus on small and medium business. This is a topic of interest to me as I run a small business, a lot of the clients that I serve are small and medium sized businesses, and small and medium sized businesses drive a significant portion of our economy.

Now, I have been around long enough to remember that the only way that you got any attention from Microsoft directly was to be a big business. As in, you have hundreds or thousands of employees. Plus, the only solutions that they brought to the table were ones with William H. Gates III stamp of approval. But after speaking to Mr. Sanborn, I now see that Microsoft is a very different company. For example, Microsoft now has solutions tailored for small business. I can highlight the following as examples:

• Microsoft is platform agnostic. Seriously they are. That’s best highlighted by the fact that Microsoft solutions and services are available on any device. For example, you can use Office 365 on your PC or Mac, but store and access your files on OneDrive on your Android, iOS or Windows Phone device. That way you can choose to use the devices that work for you rather than be forced into a particular ecosystem. Thus they’re no longer the company that popularized the term “embrace, extend, extinguish.”
• You get multiple channels to access Microsoft. Whether it’s via phone, online via MicrosoftStore.ca, or in a Microsoft Store location, you can pick the path that works best for you. Regardless of which channel you choose, you’re going to get advice that is focused on a business audience before you purchase which I consider to be very valuable. Plus you’re going to get access to a suite of phones, tablets, software and computers from a variety of vendors.
• Microsoft can help you to be leverage all of this to make your business more agile and kick it up to the next level. Be it cloud, Windows 10, or Windows powered hardware.

All the above points are true whether you’re someone like me who is running a company by themselves or you’re a growing business. At the end of our conversation, it was clear to me that Microsoft really wants to make this work. I think that once Microsoft gets some momentum going behind this, other companies (read: Apple) will have to step up their game in terms of how they handle small and medium businesses because this approach will make Microsoft the destination for small businesses wishing to leverage technology more efficient. Kudos to them for providing the resources that businesses need to be successful.

This entry was posted on November 13, 2015 at 9:00 am and is filed under Products with tags Microsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.