NetEnrich Survey: Microsoft Azure Users Lean on Channel for Support

SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwired - Feb 16, 2017) - NetEnrich, the cloud and IT operations services company, announces results of a survey on Microsoft Azure. The survey, which ran online in January, was completed by 80+ IT professionals in large and midmarket companies. A key takeaway was that Azure use is high -- 46% of respondents are running at least half of their IT infrastructure and workloads on Microsoft's cloud service -- and companies are relying on channel providers to help them achieve various business and technical benefits.

Despite hefty competition in the public cloud infrastructure space, Microsoft's Azure unit realized revenue of $6.9 billion in the last quarter, and Microsoft estimates Azure compute usage more than doubling year over year, according to some reports. NetEnrich is a Microsoft Technology Partner for Azure. The firm has hundreds of partners that white label and leverage NetEnrich to support more than 1,400 end-clients, including top brands. Its partners include top distributors such as Ingram Micro, Tech Data, Westcon, Softbank (Japan), and Synnex.

Many survey respondents cited channel companies as key to their use of and success with Microsoft Azure. Sixty-seven percent said they were "very likely" to engage a Managed Services Provider (MSP) in the next year to migrate to Azure or to manage their cloud and/or on-premises environment. The top benefit of working with a MSP to manage Azure was security, backups, disaster recovery planning and protection (72%). The second biggest benefit was discovery and inventory of IT resources (65%), followed by assessment of cost and ROI and to develop a cloud roadmap (59%). Meanwhile, 63% of respondents prefer to work with small, nimble service providers or individual consultants.

Other key findings from the NetEnrich 2017 Microsoft Azure Survey include:

• 62% of respondents operate a multi-cloud environment including Azure
• 47% of respondents say the top expected benefits of using Azure are reduction in TCO, on-demand availability, business continuity and geo replication
• 35% of respondents say the greatest benefit of using Azure 1-2 years from now is cost savings, so IT can dedicate more time to business projects
• 30% of respondents say the greatest challenge with Azure adoption is data security and privacy concerns; the second biggest challenge (28%) is budgetary constraints
• 64% of respondents said they plan to purchase tools in the next year to help with Azure migration and management; 57% said they plan to purchase cloud analysis and optimization tools; 56% will buy cloud monitoring tools
• 37% of respondents said the most important use of Azure in the next year would be to support development and test environments; 35% said the most important use would be to support data center or database modernization
• 72% of respondents said that third-party tools and services either had "already paid off" or will occur in terms of achieving a fast ROI on Azure
• 79% of respondents said the interconnect of Azure with other Microsoft products such as Office 365 and Enterprise Mobility Suite is "extremely important"

"Microsoft Azure is clearly growing its position in the public cloud market as companies of all sizes look to modernize infrastructure, deploy new services quickly and reduce costs," says Justin Crotty, Senior VP and GM for Channel Sales & Marketing at NetEnrich. "We're hearing this from our channel partners all the time. Their customers are moving aggressively to public cloud and they need support from partners to migrate and manage workloads and applications. We're able to help distributors, resellers and MSPs by getting them trained on best practices for setting up, monitoring and managing Azure instances."

About NetEnrich
NetEnrich combines industrialized services and a proprietary automation platform to deliver IT infrastructure, operations, and security management services from on-premise to cloud. NetEnrich is also a Microsoft technology partner specializing in accelerating deployment, migration and management of application workloads on Azure. Our approach to IT operations and security reduces costs, mitigates risk, provides control and drives innovation. NetEnrich has five global delivery centers, is headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, and is a Gartner 2015 Cool Vendor. To learn more about NetEnrich, visit www.netenrich.com.