U.S. Enterprises Look to Service Providers to Help Them Maximize Value from Microsoft Tools

The COVID-19 pandemic has driven many U.S. enterprises to invest in cloud-based Microsoft products and services that support remote work, and many are looking to third-party service providers to help them get full value from that investment, according to a new report published today by Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III), a leading global technology research and advisory firm.

The 2021 ISG Provider Lens Microsoft Ecosystem Report for the U.S. sees a significant opportunity for service providers to help enterprises make full use of their Microsoft products. In many cases, companies have failed to capitalize on the full value of their Microsoft suites, the report observes.

At the same time, the pandemic has driven companies to seek provider support for such Microsoft products as Teams and Mixed Reality, and for moving industry-specific workloads to Azure, the report says.

“The pandemic has created upheaval in the Microsoft services ecosystem, throwing plans into disarray through the disruption of in-person work,” said Jan Erik Aase, partner and global leader, ISG Provider Lens Research. “Service providers have invested heavily in capabilities that can help their customers get the most out of the Microsoft relationships. Remarkably, they have successfully delivered these services despite their own travel and work restrictions.”

The report sees service providers focused on expanding their capabilities with Microsoft Teams, the collaboration tool that has become popular during the pandemic. Enterprises that have avoided a strong messaging platform culture in the past have been forced to use Teams as a result of office work restrictions. Service providers have invested heavily in deploying bots that users can interact with through Teams, and in some cases, in developing services that can help rein in sprawling deployments marked by haphazard adoption.

In addition, the pandemic has pushed enterprises to adopt Microsoft’s cloud-based Office 365 suite, if they had not already done so before early 2020, the report says. For most enterprises, the focus now is on evaluating how to get the most from their existing Office 365 licenses. In some cases, companies are paying for capabilities they are not using or using well, and the report sees a major opportunity for service providers to assist in maximizing value from Microsoft’s productivity suite.