Ambitious local partners drive growth

“You do need to constantly be prepared. This is a space that will change very fast. The first mover tends to be the one who has a higher chance of survival as well,” says Laurence Si, Managing Director, Microsoft Malaysia.

Microsoft may be 50 years old, but innovation and success continues to spread across the world thanks to the partner ecosystem. As one of the largest tech companies in the world, Microsoft also has one of the largest partner ecosystems.

In Southeast Asia, Microsoft continues to experience significant growth with investments announced across the region over the past few years. In Malaysia, Microsoft’s latest data center is expected to go live soon and is expected to see greater demand and support for its services.

According to Managing Director, Microsoft Malaysia, Microsoft’s success in Malaysia today is obviously built on the success of how it built a vibrant ecosystem. With over 500,000 eco-partners worldwide, Microsoft has 2,000 active partners in Malaysia.

For Si, the whole partner engagement is crucial to how they serve customers together. Si explained that it starts with keeping the vibrancy and having extensive partner programs which enable more partner engagement.

“We have a bunch of different types of certification programs that we do. We do joint events with partners and have events where we do end-user community and so on. A lot of partners get involved as well. There are various forms of engagement with partners. We do think it is important that every time we have a new program, we constantly over-communicate with our partners as well,” explained Si.

Being constantly prepared

According to Si, ambitious partners can make the most of the opportunities that are ahead of them in the market, especially since the market is also going through an inflation point.

“There's whole on-brand to the cloud, cloud to AI. There's whole thinking about how AI is transforming not just customer experience, but the whole go-to-market strategy. Everything has changed as well. This is where I would encourage partners to think about the areas that have status quo. And now is the right time to distract and take it to the next level as well. Because IT is an industry where the status quo, while it can feel comfortable, it can be the most dangerous place to be as well,” said Si.

“You do need to constantly be prepared. This is a space that will change very fast. The first mover tends to be the one who has a higher chance of survival as well,” he added.

Si also pointed out that when he first took over this role about a year ago, he remains highly ambitious about what Malaysia can achieve, not just withing the country but on a global scale as well. Si believes that partners can deliver world-class solutions to customers here.

“We are in an era where the talent base is not as material as how you use technology. In Malaysia, we have great talents here. We now have access to world-class platforms like OpenAI and all these are coming to this part of the world as well. We can deliver world-class solutions. For partners and Microsoft people, if you want to be successful, we have to think world-class. Just being good enough in today's globalized economy, is not going to be good enough,” said Si.

Si also highlighted that there has been massive demand for the move to cloud as Microsoft’s new data center prepares to go live. Si believes the demand for more cloud services and AI will also see the need for more AI skills in the country, both from partners and customers as well.

“If the world is going to cloud and AI, how do I focus on AI skilling? AI skilling becomes a huge conversation. Not just with the end user, but also with the partner as well. We run all types of AI skilling programs for our customers and do the same thing with partners as well. We have a series of AI skilling programs for our partners as well. Because if you want to embrace all these new areas of AI, we need our skill also,” added Si.

Interestingly, Si also acknowledged that while AI is going to replace jobs of people who don't know how to use AI or leverage AI, the same can also be applied to partners and almost everyone else.

“The market is definitely at an inflation point. It's definitely ready to explode. The opportunity is there. Are we going to seize it? Absolutely,” concluded Si.