This month I thought I would touch on a program which has been introduced by Microsoft called the Azure Migration and Modernization Program or AMMP for short.
Much like the name suggests the AMMP program has been designed to support partners in their migration and modernization journey with their customers by providing supporting tools and processes from technical guidance, training, and finding a supporting partner in cases where your organization may not have the technical expertise currently to qualify for the AMMP program directly.
If we take a step back and look at what AMMP is targeted at, it is aimed at customers through partners who have an environment they are looking to move to the cloud, but additional support is required around the planning, deploying, and adoption phases into Azure. This could be around discovery of assets and services to be moved, preparing a business case, assembling a migration and modernization plan, utilising tooling to assist in right sizing and alternative offerings, technical insights, support in execution, and financial support.
When I think of the AMMP program in relation to other offerings from Microsoft, it is targeted at the medium to large sized customer opportunities. While it is designed to be tied to a customer, the process of running an opportunity through the AMMP program brings along experience for your organisation – both sales and engineering – with the Azure cloud and its many product offerings.
Looking at the opportunity from a small business point of view, typically by their nature they are of a smaller size, but in some instances can still qualify for the AMMP program so I would strongly suggest reaching out to us or your PDM around any opportunities as if the opportunity does not fit within the AMMP program there may be other programs that it could qualify for that we can advise on.
So where potentially do we see opportunity in these programs being utilised? We have seen a lot of discussion around migration of older unsupported infrastructure into Azure, typically around an older SQL Server installation that needs to be maintained for regulatory reasons so may not be needed day to day, but it is required to have it always available. RDS is another example where we have seen an uptick in queries, as customers move to complete hardware refreshes, they are taking a fresh look at the cloud and the offerings it provides to support a more mobile and remote workforce – Azure Virtual Desktop for example provides a more modern take on RDS while maintaining strict security and control that some industries require like in the finance and regulatory industries.
My takeaway for you from the above is that no matter your opportunity size, reach out to the Microsoft/Azure team at Dicker Data, and we can assist with finding the right programs and offerings to support your customers’ requirements for their journey into the cloud.
If you are looking for additional details on the AMMP program, you can check out the following URL containing the associated material from Microsoft.
https://www.microsoft.com/azure/partners/ammp
