CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Softchoice, a leading North American IT solutions and managed services provider, is pleased to announce that it has achieved industry-leading growth of 1,200+ percent in its Microsoft Azure business over the first half of Microsoft’s fiscal year. This achievement was driven by a mass expansion of customer adoption for services that Softchoice provides in the migration and management of workloads within Azure.
Softchoice also reported 400 percent growth in the number of customers subscribing to its Keystone Essential Managed Services offering for Azure, which provides unlimited configuration mentorship and problem resolution support through its always open 24/7 Keystone Technical Support Center.
“It became very evident in 2016 that customers need to manage their applications and infrastructure in Azure very differently than the way they managed them on premises,” said Chris Woodin, Senior Director of Microsoft at Softchoice. “Our customers – who are migrating server workloads and data to Azure – would rather have Softchoice take responsibility for the management of those applications at a fraction of the cost it would take for them to manage it themselves, while also gaining the scale and expertise of the largest Azure partner in North America.”
Through its support for over 800 customers that subscribe to Azure through them, Softchoice has gained three key insights:
1. Many businesses are over-spending on Azure as they struggle to right size the selection of the appropriate Azure service to the unique workloads they are operating
2. The greatest ROI that Softchoice customers are experiencing in Azure has resulted from their ability to provide an IT platform exactly matched to the compute requirements of their applications, while not having to maintain physical hardware
3. Governance is emerging as a top priority in Azure planning and management, with outcomes focused on cost control and security
Based on the evolving needs of their customers, Softchoice is excited to announce the launch of Azure Infrastructure Management in February 2017, which takes complete responsibility for the administration of Azure on behalf of their customers.
“With 24/7 monitoring and complete responsibility for functions such as policy and resource management, backup and recovery services, and virtual machine management, we’re solving the gap that has prevented our customers from accelerating their transformation to cloud computing on Azure,” says Craig McQueen, Director, Microsoft Practice at Softchoice. “Softchoice is not new to infrastructure management. In fact, the Azure Infrastructure Management offering leverages Softchoice’s 20 years of experience managing networks and data centers for their customers.”
About Softchoice
As a leading North American provider of IT solutions and managed services, Softchoice combines the efficiency and reliability of a national IT supplier with the personal touch and technical expertise of a local solutions provider. Softchoice’s holistic approach to technology includes solution design, implementation, asset management, and cloud and managed services, as well as access to one of the most comprehensive and cost-effective technology distribution networks in North America. With over 1,500 employees, Softchoice manages the technology needs of thousands of corporate and public sector organizations across the United States and Canada.
