As organizations continue to move into the cloud, opportunities abound in reselling email and productivity apps. They’re massively sticky, and they create strong customer loyalty. The gold standard, of course, is Microsoft Office 365, by far the most widely used productivity and collaboration toolset on the market today. But, as most managed service providers (MSPs) know, it’s hard to make enough revenue to keep afloat simply by selling subscriptions to Office 365. Making real money with Office 365 requires finding ways to turn those subscriptions into long-term revenue sources. Organizations don’t have to be Tier-1 Microsoft partners to offer support for Office 365 and benefit from the subsequent customer growth possibilities. Instead, MSPs can leverage partner programs, such as the Office 365 Reseller and Referral Program from Rackspace, to offer managed services for Office 365 to customers while tapping into Microsoft expertise from a Tier-2 Microsoft partner. This eWEEK slide show highlights five ways MSPs can derive recurring revenue from reselling Office 365, including owning the customer relationship, controlling margins and bundling value-added products and services.
