A 65-person Microsoft Gold Partner IT consultant located in Sterling, Virginia, with commercial and government customers.
IT Services
United States
English
When i3solutions, a 65-person Sterling, Virginia IT consultant, decided to beta test Office 2010 Professional Plus with Office 365 and Office Web Apps,
it had two motives: How could it and its customers benefit? After a three month evaluation, the results were clear. The IT consultant anticipates four new revenue streams that could generate up to $2 million in new revenue in the first year. The Microsoft Gold Partner eagerly awaits the formal launch of Office 365 and has identified specific projects that will take advantage of the new cloud-based service.
i3solutions is a 65-person IT consultant and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner headquartered in Sterling, Virginia. Most of its customer base comprises a combination of commercial and government accounts. As the opportunity came to evaluate Office 2010 Professional Plus with Office 365 beta, the firm had both an internal and external motive for doing so. Internally, it wanted to explore reducing its own growing infrastructure costs. Externally, it saw an opportunity to provide enterprise-level products and services to customers of all sizes.
We see 10 percent of the revenue coming from direct sales, 25 percent strategy alignment recommendations, 40 percent flowing from custom solutions and another 25 percent generated from follow-up training.
– Linc Williams
Director of Strategic Services,
i3solutions, Inc..
For the last 1.5 years, i3solutions has sold the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS) to 20 customers, of which 16 currently remain active.“We’ve generated about $150,000 in revenue, but interest gradually waned with customers,” said Linc Williams, Director of Strategic Services, i3solutions, Inc. “BPOS just didn’t quite go far enough. It only provided entry-level functionality around SharePoint and meeting capability for example. Office applications were not integrated into it. What was needed was enterprise-level functionality.”
BPOS is a set of messaging and collaboration tools, delivered as a subscription service, that gives businesses rich capabilities without the need to deploy and maintain software and hardware on-premise. These online services are designed to help meet needs for robust security, all-day every-day reliability, and user productivity.
By contrast, Office 365 is the introduction of new online services and capabilities, new user experiences, and new online platform capabilities related to the introduction of new underlying “2010” server software into Microsoft Online Services data centers, as well as other major new service and platform investments. In essence, Office 365 is a significant enhancement of BPOS.
As part of an Office 365 beta program, the IT consultant set up a user test-bed of eight individuals using Office 2010 Professional Plus with Office 365 and Office Web Apps. The test lasted three months.
During that time virtually every Office application was used with its corresponding Web Apps cousin in addition to Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online—all part of the robust set of capabilities designed into Office 365.
The internal experiences with Office 2010 Professional Plus with Office 365 gave the IT consultant the confidence to eagerly anticipate the launch of Office 365 as well as extrapolate the positive impact the new service is expected to have on its revenues.
“We believe Office 365 is a full-feature, robust service offering with real value for us and our customers,” noted Williams. “We want in on the ground-floor.”
Office 365 Beta—Up To $2 Million in New Revenue
i3solutions sees Office 365 as a game-changer, bringing together many of the most powerful software solutions Microsoft has.
“We love the new business potential behind Office 365. It could add $1 to 2 million in top-line revenue each year,” said Williams.
Williams continued, “Larger budgets will now be available for customized solutions instead of basic infrastructure and support.”
Four Potential Revenue Streams
i3solutions believes it will benefit in from four different Office 365 revenue streams: (1) selling the basic service, (2) generating strategy alignment and technology selection recommendations, (3) building customized solutions and (4) providing support training for user adopted strategies.
“We see 10 percent of the revenue coming from direct sales, 25 percent from strategy alignment recommendations, 40 percent flowing from custom solutions and another 25 percent generated from follow-up training,” said Williams.
Customer Satisfaction Grows by 5 Percent
New Office 365 capabilities have streamlined how i3solutions works with its clients and manages document approval. The net result has increased customer satisfaction.
“Since we have implemented the Office solutions, customer satisfaction has increased 5 percent,” said Williams. “We are pleased but definitely not done pushing for excellence.”
Anticipate Immediate Deployment
When i3solutions was asked about Office 365 deployment plans as the service became available, they were eager to rapidly move ahead.
“Not only will i3solutions deploy Office 365 day-one when it’s available,” summarized Williams, “We have a specific project in the wings, ready to go.”
Microsoft Case Study: i3solutions