Tony Jayne (centre) collects the Homegrown ISV of the Year award at the 2016 Reseller News ICT Industry Awards
Auckland-based unified communications (UC) service management provider Virsae has achieved "co-sell ready" status through the Microsoft One Commercial Partner (OCP) Program.
The co-sell initiative, which was unveiled at Microsoft Inspire in June 2017, includes a US$250 million investment in Microsoft seller incentives to drive stakeholder engagement, targeted growth and amplified global visibility for selected independent software vendor (ISV) partners such as Virsae.
As a Microsoft co-sell partner Virsae, which is 26 per cent owned by Comworth Group, will now have access to marketing and communications support, technical assistance and the specialist services of a business development manager.
"Becoming a Microsoft co-sell partner is a big deal for New Zealand technology providers because the programme gives them support from Microsoft’s large, global sales force to drive new business,” said Hamish McNee, ISV partner development manager at Microsoft New Zealand.
"We think Virsae has developed a solution worthy of note on the world stage. We want to acknowledge their success thus far and help them reach even greater heights through our global networks."
Virsae was already a Microsoft Gold ISV Partner for several years, with its cloud-based Virsae Service Management platform (VSM) helping businesses keep communications at peak performance.
Specifically, VSM helps identify and address the root cause of UC, contact centre, infrastructure, and security issues, using a single interface to simplify management, reduce costs and improve customer experience.
"Just last month Microsoft hosted us at their Inspire Conference, where they introduced us to their full sales team and provided valuable networking opportunities," added Tony Jayne, CEO of Virsae.
"We’re looking forward to many more avenues opening up to us in future through our co-sell partnership.”
Virsae raised $3 million from ten local investors in 2016 to fund global growth.
As previously reported, another local ISV, Leapthought, has also joined the co-sell ready program.
In July, Microsoft announced it had generated 11,000 co-sell wins worth US$5 billion through the channel in the over the previous 12 months - the vendor's Azure cloud platform contributed $2.8 billion of that total.
The figures were the result of a shift in approach from the tech giant, billed as the “largest sales transformation” in decades, with the new-look OCP roll-out designed to drive deeper collaboration between internal direct sellers and partners.
