How Do You Build a New Business Practice?

Recently Microsoft employees like me have been focusing on helping partners adopt new technologies that they can weave into their business solutions. A decade ago it was embracing being a managed service provider; five years ago it was leveraging Office 365 (OK it was called BPOS, but you know what I mean) and today it’s Azure and Enterprise Mobility + Security. Regardless of who you are, you should have some idea on how you learn new technologies. I, for example, know that I am an experiential learner; just hearing about it, or seeing it is not good enough, I have to DO it; experience it.

In light of that observation, I’ve noticed LOTS of recent announcements about resources to help a partner get started building Azure based solutions. In this blog post, I wanted to highlight some of the resources published by my peers based on the type of learner you might be.

 

Visual Learner

For people who like to read their information, you can start with a recently published Sway by Katie Ryckman about getting started with Azure:

Azure Partner Journey (https://sway.com/bhPYZSA0sVf9Oy85)

 

Auditory Learner

For people who like to hear their information, there is a great PowerPoint Mix recording from Chris Large about getting started with Azure:

Accelerating Partner’s Azure Practice Development (https://mix.office.com/watch/1xnp24mvahx1w)

 

Experiential Learner

For people like me who like “doing”, the TS2 Team is hosting an Azure JumpStart:

SMB JumpStart: Azure Virtual Machines (https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/uspartner_ts2team/2017/01/11/azure-virtual-machine-jumpstart/)

 

A Little Bit of Everything

And if you are just interested in getting all the information you can, Terry Stein and Matt Hester have been working on a series:

So you want to build an Azure Practice: Series Home Page (https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/uspartner_ts2team/2016/10/10/so-you-want-to-build-an-azure-practice-series-home-page/)

 

  Steve