Microsoft + Smartbridge – Setting the Foundation for Your 2023 Digital Landscape
With 2023 quickly approaching, it’s time to evaluate how you’ll approach digital innovation next year. Smartbridge along with Microsoft, their many applications, and new cloud partner program are here to help.
The Vision for Your 2023 Garden
With all the questions around what 2023 may bring us, there are some definitive directions that businesses will take around digital innovation. Business leaders will focus on cost optimization and revenue growth. Most will be doubling down on the digital imperative: invest heavily in optimizing and automating mission-critical workloads. They will continue to enhance customer experience and reduce friction through multichannel engagement.
Innovation will take a center seat. This will require businesses to enhance and accelerate their digital maturity, ranging from Data & AI, modernizing enterprise applications, automation, and taking advantage of cloud capabilities. This brings us to Microsoft.
At the Microsoft Ignite event in October 2022, an emphasis on Microsoft Cloud implied that it is the ultimate vessel to facilitate these digital agendas. From the official Ignite wrap-up: “The backdrop for our news at Microsoft Ignite is how the Microsoft Cloud can help our customers do more with less, which represents our renewed focus to help customers maximize their existing IT investments and optimize costs in uncertain economic times.”
The Good Soil: Smartbridge + Microsoft Partnership
Smartbridge’s commitment to our Microsoft partnership has never been stronger. The proof is in the pudding with our new AppSource and Azure marketplace listings (adding more every month), along with a growing number of Azure subscriptions by our clients. There has also been tremendous interest in Power BI as the analytics platform of choice, and migrations to Azure cloud infrastructure to create a foundation for innovation with the likes of Synapse and Azure Machine Learning.
No doubt you represent an organization that has a number of Microsoft products already. So, you may have seen that Microsoft’s partner program (partners like Smartbridge that resell or extend the value of their solutions) has changed as of October 2022. The Microsoft Silver and Gold partner levels are making way for the new Cloud Partner Program. We’re happy to report that we are on a great trajectory to turn our Gold level competencies of Data Analytics, Data Platform, DevOps, and App Integration into even more value for our clients with the new program. For you as a Microsoft customer, this will entitle you to access even more benefits through Smartbridge, as we are poised to take advantage of some of the new program’s opportunities.
Data & AI
Smartbridge’s 20-year history with data management and business intelligence has evolved seamlessly into a solution set built for 2023 needs. We’ve already built a substantial portfolio of migrating data to cloud-based data warehouses and enabling cloud-based analytics solutions.
We continue to increase our capacity to plan and deliver tailored Microsoft analytics solutions using Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Lake, Azure Data Factory, AI Builder, and Azure Databricks.
And finally, based on the needs of our clients, we are focused on enabling customer adoption of Al and implementing Azure solutions for Al-powered apps and machine learning life cycles.
The Intelligent Data Platform is the newest packaging from Microsoft. It’s a way to build the story of Microsoft Cloud and nicely conveys how Microsoft partners, like Smartbridge, deliver data engineering services in support of operational databases, analytics, and data governance across tools such as:
Image courtesy of Microsoft
Business Applications
Business Applications is how Microsoft packages their Dynamics and Power Platform solution sets. For Smartbridge, our investment in our consulting professionals’ skills for the Power Platform have been ongoing, and we will continue doubling down on the Power-verse in 2023.
Power BI
As the leader of the Power Platform team, Power BI has a dual role to play within the Data & AI family as well. For us, it was the tool that started it all, and it continues to be a great place for any Microsoft customer to start their Power Platform voyage. (We have a great post on the value of the Power Platform if you need a 101)
Power Apps
Application development has been one of the quickest technology evolutions in the last decade. Once reserved for senior developers, app creation is mostly done through low/no-code options such as Power Apps. It’s the means to an end, delivering insights in Power BI or approval workflows through Power Automate, always need to be accompanied by a Power App. The ease of building an app is one thing, but the framework, governance, data management, and adoption usually requires expert support.
Power Automate
Interestingly, Microsoft has not included Power Automate as a leading solution within any of the new Cloud Partner Solution areas. However, this likely won’t last long as they are continually evolving the new program each week. In fact, Ignite 2022 announced many new Power Automate enhancements to make it further accessible to business users. “Power Automate is introducing new ways for an organization to use its service and deploy robotic process automation across their enterprise. Makers of automation Center of Excellences will benefit from these latest innovations.”
Smartbridge’s Intelligent Automation services around UiPath and Power Automate will likely see some forward momentum due to UiPath’s recent announcement to integrate with Microsoft Power Platform by early 2023.
Smartbridge continues evolving our Microsoft partnership to accommodate the needs of our clients. There are plenty of great options when it comes to cloud architecture, analytics, custom development, and the like. We implement and support many great technologies based on what’s best for the organization’s needs. Microsoft will always play a role in every organization’s IT ecosystem, and we’ve seen a steady adoption of more of their solutions in lieu of others every day.
If you are eager to understand how some of Microsoft’s newer solutions may support your 2023 digital agenda, please reach out to Smartbridge for a no-pressure consultation.
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