Can you be the F1rst Among Equals?

There’s always something special about being the first. You may carry the honour with a devil-may-care nonchalance, but whether you’re the first to own a new piece of tech, or you’ve come first place in the parent’s egg ‘n’ spoon race at your kid’s sports day, there’s a certain swagger that you just can’t shake off.

Imagine, then, the feeling not only of coming first, but of winning a corking prize for doing so. Oh! The smugness would overflow! Well, that’s the opportunity you get with Westcoast F1rsts, in collaboration with Microsoft.

Getting more from ‘best of both’ worlds

By Mark Davies 

It feels like it’s always been the same old story for the majority of businesses on their cloud journeys. Or sometimes the lack of journey.

They reach a stage where a certain amount of their data and applications have been successfully migrated to the cloud, while the rest - the ones that feel can’t be moved -remain on-prem.

Once those basic applications are moved to the cloud this should be their chance to take stock and see what else could be done to make their IT more efficient or cost-effective.

Cue head-scratching and deliberations on how they can best utilise both on-prem equipment and cloud based services.

But having applications running in two different places but connecting to each other has become very achievable especially with the advent of open 'apis' (application programming interfaces), which allow applications to communicate with each other.

The reality is that today, more and more businesses believe a blend of cloud and on-prem is a desirable end-position.

Secure Productive Enterprise: The Next Big Thing for Licences in Office 365

By Tom Marwood

At the backend of last year, rather under the radar, Microsoft released a gem of a package that rolled out across multiple platforms. Although not advertised too much at the time, it’s now being noticed, and rightly so. This blog will discuss what it is, and how you can license it.

SPE (Secure Productive Enterprise) is the latest ‘bundle’ to be rolled out on Office 365 away from your standard Office 365 offerings. This combines the latest technology across Windows, Office 365, Enterprise Mobility and Security. Obviously there are packages such as Enterprise E3, Business Premium and so forth, but SPE gives you that next level of products, all in one price. There are two different products for SPE (E3 and E5), each offering the below:

Westcoast’s Cloud Marketplace: An Introduction

By Tom Marwood

It’s safe to say that, over the last 18 months, CSP through Westcoast has risen at an astronomical rate. Currently we’re transacting over 140,000 seats across 400 of our Resellers and this is growing on a daily basis. One of the reasons why we’re getting such a demand from Resellers is the Westcoast Cloud Marketplace – so I thought I’d tell you more about it.

Build your business with Westcoast and Cloud

By Mark Davies – Westcoast Cloud Director

So as we have just come to the end of our first full year of transacting CSP seats with partners we can look back with a real sense of pride in what has been achieved. Over 72,000 seats have been successfully put onto Office 365 and a range of other services such as CRM, EMS and Azure transacted through over 300 partners. We set out at the beginning of the year to ensure that we have a more focussed partner engagement. This approach has meant that we have been able to work more closely with the partners that have signed up with Westcoast to help them win more opportunities and build a better cloud business with our support.

Brand New Nebula Events – 3 Huge Reasons to Attend

So, Nebula is back in Reading, Manchester, Dublin and London! And what better way to get the information about it than a quick 2-minute deep dive into the most important points?

For those of you that want to skip to all of the full gritty details, you can find out more about the events and register here.

A look at Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility Suite

It’s coming up to two years since Microsoft’s new mobile device management (MDM) software was announced by Satya Nadella. As it’s coming up to its two year anniversary this year, it’s safe to say that it’s been steadily growing in users. 

This is no doubt in part to the rising popularity of Office 365 in the work place, meaning that software and credentials are getting used on more than just the standard desktop PC. For organisations that support using multiple devices, MDM solutions are by far the best way to manage them. Well, it is called mobile device management software after all.

Nebula – Journeying through the Cloud

By Rebecca Richards

Hello Partners!

 I’d like to thank all those that attended Stage 1 of the Nebula Program at the Cloud Partner Days. Covering London, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh and Dublin, over 200 attendees came together to discuss Westcoast’s and Microsoft’s commitment to support our partners and the opportunities in the cloud.

Edinburgh Speakers Revealed for Nebula Program

By Phil Lamplugh

So, some of you may be aware that as part of our new Nebula Program (that’s our big campaign covering all things cloud), we’ve recently announced some Cloud Partner Days that will be at cities all over the UK. Five dates, five brilliant venues, five fantastic cities. This must be what it feels like to be a rock star… Almost.