Scott Braden

Mar. 19,2012

Microsoft is offering a new add-on option to Premier Support Agreements, called “Cloud Vantage Services.”  The offering appears to be designed to address the most common customer concerns about Office365.  For early-adopter customers, a service such as Cloud Vantage could serve to reduce the risk of adopting Office 365, smooth the transition and help the organization manage the change to a different way of infrastructure delivery.

But this service also is an acknowledgement that “all at once” Office365 adoption is fraught with risk.  Further, Microsoft has traditionally left this type of hands-on integration work to Partners. Even the PDF mentions that “this is Microsoft’s first lifecycle service…”

There’s no doubt that Office365 has caught the interest or many business and IT leaders; and this new service makes it clear that the transition is not as simple as hoped.  Just more reason to proceed cautiously “into the cloud” because there may be pitfalls lurking beyond sight.

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