There is tremendous partner opportunity in building a practice around helping SMB customers migrate to SQL Server on Azure. Partners of varying sizes around the world have used Azure to close deals up to 100% higher in revenue than their average contract value. They have also increased the size of deal flow pipelines by an average of 50 to 100%.1
At the same time, there are excellent reasons for customers to migrate and modernize to Azure SQL. With Azure SQL, IT sees a 25% efficiency increase and database administrators enjoy a 40% productivity enhancement.2 And among CEOs, 76% consider digital transformation their top priority.3
In this second of four blog articles about migrating to Azure SQL, we spoke with Eric Hudson, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Azure SQL at Microsoft. We asked him why partners should build a practice focused on migrating customers to SQL Server on Azure. And learned how partners can explain the value of migrating and modernizing to customers, whether they are still using SQL Server 2008 or a more recent on-premises SQL Server. SYNNEX is one of Microsoft’s largest distributors and is uniquely positioned to help customers with their SQL workloads, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or both.
Why should a partner advise customers to move to Azure for SQL (vs. SQL Server on-premises)?
There are productivity gains from shedding infrastructure management. Customers already see the benefits of additional flexibility, scalability, and adaptability from being in the cloud.
Not only is working in the cloud particularly pertinent now, with people working remotely, but it also means Azure manages the datacenter, whether the company’s IT professional is onsite or not. While remote working will come and go, what will remain is the ability to scale, be flexible, and adapt to changing conditions.
What other benefits should partners highlight for customers?
- Certainly, the fully managed aspect. Customers won’t need to do updates or manage the infrastructure anymore.
- In the cloud, customers have access to a lot of innovation, particularly with analytics and AI, which offer new insights faster and help build smarter apps, among other benefits.
- On the SQL Database serverless side, you’re billed per second and only for the compute resources you use.
- Microsoft Power BI, which gets you from data to insights quickly, is a hot ticket at SYNNEX at the moment. Additional insights are available through Azure Synapse Analytics. Analytics and AI are both pretty exciting.
- SQL Database with Hyperscale is a cloud-native storage architecture that enables massive backups and restores in only minutes. That’s a pretty big deal.
How do partners make money from Azure SQL Managed Instance?
Not only do you facilitate the migration planning and execution, but also the modernization piece going forward. Machine learning (ML)–based technologies, for example, include IoT and analytics.
How are Azure SQL Managed Instance and Azure SQL Database different?
Azure SQL consists of three services:
- SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines (VM) on IaaS is pretty familiar. It’s your “lift and shift,” where you choose your VM and SQL Server version, and you’re off.
- Azure SQL Managed Instance (MI) combines the broadest SQL Server engine compatibility with all the benefits of a fully managed, evergreen platform as a service. It lets you modernize apps at scale with the SQL skills and experience you already have, and is almost entirely compatible with on-premises SQL Server. It sometimes requires a bit of re-architecting or reworking of apps.
- Azure SQL Database (DB) is for net-new cloud app development and features technologies like serverless compute and Hyperscale storage options.
How do you find the right version of Azure SQL for your customer?
We use a simple Q&A tool that helps point customers in the right direction given their unique feature and functionality requirements. If they need access to the operating file systems on a VM, that’s SQL Server VM. If there are on-premises features they want to use in the cloud, and they want a fully managed service, then SQL Managed Instance is best. If they want database engine features but not necessarily at the instance level, SQL Database may be their best choice.
What else can you do with Azure SQL?
The biggest challenges center around app compatibility and supported and deprecated features. Our Microsoft Data Migration Assistant can do an upfront assessment that determines what’s fine and what might have problems.
There’s great opportunity for partners. A Forrester study4 talked about how partners can make a significant amount building some or all of their practice in the cloud and helping customers navigate through migration challenges.
What concerns might customers have when moving to Azure SQL?
Some DBAs, who were doing all the work on-premises themselves, may be concerned about lack of control. However, their SQL Server skills and experience easily transfer to Azure SQL. Because they don’t need to spend time doing performance tuning and otherwise managing infrastructure, they can focus on value-add priorities. For IT and business decision makers, it’s pretty much all upside.
What’s the partner or customer responsibility, vs. Microsoft, when it comes to security and compliance?
Microsoft has multilayered security across its physical datacenters, infrastructure, and operations in Azure. A team of 3,500 global cybersecurity experts work to safeguard business assets and data. Customers benefit from security features that run by default, such as encryption. There’s also data security like Azure Defender for SQL, which is value-added advanced data security that is proactive about identifying vulnerabilities, for example.
How should partners or customers think about cost?
The Azure Hybrid Benefit allows you to use your on-premises licenses to get some significant discounts in the cloud. It’s upwards of 55% off for SQL. If you commit to one to three years, reservation pricing can take that to around 85% off.
When you move from a licensing-based structure to a recurring one, you pay monthly. There can be a cost reduction associated with being fully managed.
But frankly, the higher costs are the complexity, planning, and time it can take, which depends on the overall complexity of the workloads you’re moving.
There is truly a huge opportunity for partners that facilitate the migration and modernization of their customers’ sites. Tell your customers about the many benefits of being in the cloud, help them determine which Azure SQL is right for their needs, and let them know there are substantial discounts available for making the change. When you build your practice by helping customers migrate to the cloud, you can both benefit substantially.
To learn more about building your data practice, read the top SQL Server migration questions partners have, and visit the SQL Server On-Demand Webinar Hub. Email [email protected] if you have any questions.
