Microsoft talked up the opportunity for partners to add new customers and revenue streams with Copilot at Microsoft AI Partner Innovate in Sydney yesterday.
The event was the first held by Microsoft for Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) partners in some time and was kicked off by the company’s senior director of partner channel sales for Asia Sarah Bowden.
She explained the “massive opportunity” Copilot presents for partners in ANZ, where the market boasts “three million addressable users.”
“…this is an opportunity for you to gain net new customers, but also it’s an opportunity for you to diversify your income, your revenue streams and to continually support customers in not only defining what their AI strategy is and should be, but for coming back and iterating and changing and adapting to their needs, their future needs,” she said.
“That’s why the opportunity is so exciting. It’s not ‘hey, here’s a pile of technology that you can deploy and off you go.’”
“This is something that completely needs refining and needs your support and attention to help them, so that’s going to generate different revenue streams for you in the future.”
Bowden noted the “huge” opportunity for partners to provide cloud services on the back of Copilot.
“…ANZ isn’t one of those situations where everyone is using clouds. This opportunity to take cloud now to these AI motions is something that customers are desperately wanting, and so the demand and the surge for the need for these is right here, right now and it’s your opportunity to take it.”
Copilot’s promised productivity gains
Microsoft’s Sydney partner event comes after Copilot for Security became generally available on Monday, giving partners and users an AI tool that promises faster cyberthreat responses, risk assessment and signal processing.
In January, the company announced the removal of the 300-seat purchase minimum for Copilot for Microsoft 365 that expanded availability to small and medium-sized businesses.
The AI tool’s suite also includes Copilot for Windows, Sales, Service and GitHub, among others.
Bowden shared data from Copilot’s Early Access Program which she said “identified that on average Copilot saves users more than 10 hours a month.”
She explained how Copilot helped 64 percent of users spend less time on email, while 71 percent saved time on mundane tasks and 75 per cent on finding files.
Commvault, Veeam talk partner opportunities
Commvault’s ANZ VP Martin Creighan talked up the data protection vendor’s Azure powered generative AI copilot and its Cleanroom Recovery solution launched in February.
He noted the opportunity for partners to provide consultancy services with Cleanroom.
“…there is a truckload of money to be made around the consultancy pieces, specifically around the testing and around the Cleanroom, helping your customers run their playbooks or run their scripts or write their scripts on how to complete a test, how you can recover rapidly and how you can help them become cyber resilient.”
Veeam’s ANZ regional CTO Anthony Spiteri highlighted the backup vendor’s commitment to co-innovate with Microsoft as part of a five-year partnership announced in March 2024.
By June, the company is “going to have fully integrated products in our Veeam Data Cloud which will leverage Copilot on a number of different levels; data classification, looking into emails, looking into the backup solutions and getting classic insights to help you protect your platforms and your data,” Spiteri said.
He laid out how Copilot can help partners make the most of backup data.
“What generative AI enables us to do is to take that data and unlock it. Veeam as custodians of that data are in a great position to better leverage technologies like Copilot to do stuff on that data that has ever been done,” Spiteri said.
“Think about the power of taking a backup repository that is just sitting there historically, ready for an event, a disaster; but let’s put some AI over top of it, let’s put Copilot over top of it and let’s get some meaningful information from that data.”
“A multibillion dollar opportunity”
Bowden ended the keynote by reiterating the Copilot opportunity for partners.
“Your customers’ expectations are changing, the way in which they want you to work with them is changing, the way in which they are competing is changing,” she said.
“With leaders seeking AI solutions as part of their DNA… this country is absolutely poised to be a first mover in terms of the adoption of AI.”
“What we see is a multibillion [dollar] opportunity for you the partners.”
