Microsoft Inspire is a time of learning, discovery, and new and old partnerships. In the spirit of the event, we have put together a tribute to solution partners that inspire us to push the envelope with Microsoft 365 digital workplaces.
If you are looking for the top 3 highlights of the event, take a look at our blog titled “Top 3 Microsoft Inspire Highlights and Announcements” for the details.
For a complete understanding of employee experience along with actionable insights, download our definitive guide where we share just that, and how Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Viva can come into play.
This partner portfolio is incredibly diverse, and it can be challenging to navigate. We have evaluated and collaborated with hundreds of active Microsoft 365 product companies to ensure our customers get the right fit from the best and brightest Microsoft partners. If you are an incredible organization and we haven’t worked with you as a partner, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Our own leadership team has managed and led dozens of Microsoft Services partners, and when we created 2toLead, we didn’t want to establish another Microsoft consultancy. We wanted to establish an organization that customers, partners, and communities know will do the right thing, go the extra mile, and have been fortunate enough to be called a generous consulting company. If you are looking to join our growing team or know exceptional people, please don’t hesitate to reach out on our LinkedIn postings we have up, as we are always hiring.
Microsoft and Microsoft 365 have been pushing the evolution of digital business practices since both of their inceptions. Microsoft 365 has grown a lot since the early years, and it only continues to advance as Teams, and SharePoint active daily users are at all-time highs, with no signs of slowing down.
There are entirely new challenges and opportunities in the Microsoft Power Platform space, with Azure, and in the growing ways, AI and cloud insights provide new ways to work and create business solutions.
It is an incredible time to be a Microsoft partner, and we are thrilled at the rate of innovation, not only because of the opportunities this creates for our customers and partners but also because it helps us re-invent, re-align, and always learn new things.
Not only has Microsoft done incredible things on its own, but it is also tethered to an incredible partner ecosystem of services and solutions. They have helped Microsoft push the envelope and/or helped to fill in some gaps that a company focusing on the many can’t always afford.
This blog will identify the partners that inspire us, why they inspire us and a brief description of what they do.
These partners include:
For a little more on each partner, visit our partner page or contact us to discover if they are right for your needs.
AvePoint offers an incredible breadth of products and services that make it easier, and speedier, to accomplish tasks whether your organization is all in with the cloud or in a Hybrid state. These products/services include Cloud Archiving, Cloud Backup, Citizen Services, File Share navigation (from in M365), GroupHub, Cloud Insights, Cloud Management, MyHub, Cloud Governance, Policies & Insights, Cloud Records, Administrator, Archiver, Backup & Restore, Compliance Guardian Platform, Connector, Content Manager, Data Validation, Classification & Protection, Deployment Manager, Discovery Tooling, Enterprise Risk Management, File Share Archiver, Cloud & SharePoint Migration, Governance Automation, Meetings, High Availability, Office Connect, Perimeter, Records, Replicator, Report Center and Storage Manager.
Why they inspire us
AvePoint has incredible breadth in it’s offerings. It is always relevant in today’s Microsoft 365 enterprise strategy discussions. Whether it’s leveraging… MyHub for managing Microsoft 365 workspaces and creating new ones… we are always happy when we see that our customers have invested in AvePoint.
Connect knowledge with seekers, reward questions with results, stop sifting and start asking. BA Insight provides internet-like enterprise search for organizations that want their knowledge to be askable. They do this by providing personalized, intelligent, connected (over 80 enterprise systems), relevant (automated and intelligent meta tagging) and in-app search from anywhere.
The power of a modern, intelligent and connected search has often been out of reach for many organizations due to cost, complexity and feasibility. This has fundamentally changed with Microsoft Search, search improvements and incredible ecosystem advances like those led by BA Insight who has created smart search solutions such as connectors for 80+ enterprise systems.
CardioLog Analytics enables organizations to provide in-depth Office 365 analytics, insights, trends, adoption productivity and usage reports, but more importantly makes those analytics easier to engage, enhance and enforce. As an example CardioLog enables you to target users based on behaviour and enforce certain security policies that improve data safeguarding.
The way CardioLog approaches adoption is aligned perfectly with the way we encourage organizations to leverage adoption campaigns and a just in time and in place communication approach. Between the way they use analytics with built in tooling for these adoption and communication tactics as well as enforcement is something that differentiates them from some of the other analytic vendors in the marketplace and is one of the big reasons we love working with them.
Layer2 leading solutions is the market-leading provider of data integration and document synchronization solutions for the Microsoft Cloud, focusing on Office 365, SharePoint, and Azure. More than 2.500 companies worldwide and regional partners trust in Layer2 products to keep data and files in sync between 100+ systems and apps in the cloud and on-premises.
It is almost unbelievable that a synchronization approach to integration like what Layer2 makes easier to accomplish, can provide literally millions of dollars of value in only a few months. From integrating data sources into extranet sites like supplier portals to avoiding complex integration risks and licensing impacts this is one technology you don’t want to miss out on.
Organizations everywhere look to LiveTiles to provide them with top tier solutions that elevate their SharePoint and Microsoft 365 environments, innovating beyond them, no matter the size of the organization. With some of the world’s most recognizable brands using their product, we would love to show you how their revolutionary digital workplace solutions offer broad and deep end-to-end capability to meet the needs of a modern digital workplace.
Why they inspire us
Just look at a leading Digital Workplace vendor like LiveTiles. They have explored and assessed the gaps in Microsoft’s Intranet platform and provided solutions that build on what Microsoft does well, while challenging and providing intelligently architected solutions where Microsoft falls short. They don’t only do that, but they do it in such a way that it makes it easy for customers or companies like ours to further extend and enhance it easily.
Orchestry is a balanced platform composed of adoption tools, engaging templates, controlled provisioning, and empowering self-service to drive usage and adoption success in Office 365 and Microsoft Teams. Orchestry has pioneered a comprehensive governance, adoption and enablement tool for Microsoft 365, including Microsoft Teams, that delivers control while empowering greater access to all users. They are a fairly new company but have years of knowledge in the companies founders that have been poured back into the solution.
Why they inspire us
What’s incredible is how clever Orchestry’s approach is on making the provisioning or creation process of new Teams and Sites not only easier with excellent templating/automation, but in making the challenge of when to use what easier as well. When you combine this with the ongoing challenge on managing the lifecycle and navigation of these spaces… it’s clear that the Orchestry approach really does make a difference.
Panagenda’s OfficeExpert is a modular solution that significantly improves productivity, end user experience and job satisfaction using unrivaled Office 365 performance measurement and monitoring technology. The insight it can provide can greatly help large scale global customers better manage and understand how Microsoft 365 is being used.
Why they inspire us
Panagenda understands large global enterprise customer challenges when it comes to Microsoft 365 and for licensing management they have always been easy to recommend, but the signals, monitoring and analytics in teams… especially when comparing against Zoom, Webex or other products/services in your own organization is incredibly valuable.
Powell Intranet and Teams offers compelling capabilities whether you are looking for newsroom publishing, events management, social communities, knowledge centers, search experiences, employee directories, analytics, better templating, improved navigation, better employee services or better corporate branding. IT departments everywhere are tasked with managing and maintaining their corporate digital workplace. The internal communications, rightfully, wants something enticing and easy-to-use but sometimes those solutions come at a cost. With Powell’s intranet solution, IT and internal communications can both get exactly what they want.
Why they inspire us
Powell Manager and the Powell approach leans into the gap of effective design and templating that Microsoft hasn’t filled by providing an extensible and intuitive experience that automates or simplifies so many things our customers and we as consultants must do to achieve a highly successful digital workplace.
Quest provides enterprise scale and well-rounded cloud solutions that are ready to take you from platform migration to cloud deployments quickly and effectively. Security and governance are other areas that their solution shines. The company has been around since 1987 and have packed those years of IT knowledge into their latest offerings that cover the breadth of Microsoft 365 services and applications.
Why they inspire us
Quest has a long history of providing solutions our customers need and their acquisition of Metalogix has further grown their relevant and useful portfolio of Microsoft 365 solutions for us. When it comes to Lotus Notes and a variety of other migration scenarios Quest is always at the top of our customers, and our own list as the vendor to engage for the right end-to-end approach.
Rencore is an incredible company that provides governance automation solutions that help you stay in control of Microsoft 365. You can easily identify anomalies and trends that might affect your governance plan for Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Azure, and Power Platform and automate the necessary next steps.
Why they inspire us
Rencore understands the technical complexity of the Microsoft 365 platform. We love Rencore Code (SPCAF) and have used it for years helping our customers analyze and assure code quality when building on SharePoint, Office 365 and Teams. Now we loving the incredible potential of Rencore Governance as it’s focus on the whole of the M365 platform is hard not to love… There aren’t many who offer Power Platform governance improvement and automation alongside Teams and SharePoint while also considering Microsoft Stream, Dynamics and more.
Renown for providing an easy to use tool that has and continues to enable thousands of successful migrations for SharePoint and Microsoft Teams. ShareGate is a premier solution in the migration space and can simplify and aid in the complex migration many systems to your Microsoft 365 digital workplace. They are truly the simplest way for IT to succeed with a faster transition to the Microsoft cloud.
Also, monitor your tenant and highlight ways to make it healthier based on the policies you set. Then automate and action those improvements. With many years in the industry, ShareGate, being migration specialists, saw what was happening to digital workplaces after everything had been migrated and set out to solve the issue of management and governance that comes with growth. That is when ShareGate Apricot was born, an IT first solution designed to ensure your organization can rest easy when it comes to some of the most common (and challenging) governance scenarios for Microsoft Teams.
Why they inspire us
What’s great about ShareGate is that even after so many years of enhancements, new capabilities, and improvements it still is so darn simple to use. For so many organizations they just need an easy to learn, understand and well supported solution for migration and some of the most common management/optimization activities that you need to do and it’s here that ShareGate delivers.
tyGraph uses deep insights into adoption patterns to ensure your KPI’s are being met, or what to do about those that aren’t. With tyGraph you can quickly find key influencers, subject matter experts and trends to incorporate into your digital transformation and improvement strategy. We find tyGraph to not only be accurate and useful but actionable when it comes to their analytics.
What is great about tyGraph is that they extract every bit of insight possible from the Microsoft 365 platform today and then they provide the intelligence to make many of those insights more actionable. When you think of all the audited activities in Microsoft 365 that is an incredible feat.
Simplify your data migration with the help of Tzunami’s migration tooling. They have targeted solutions that enable you to automate and simplify migrating from confluence, eRoom, Documentum, LiveLink, DocuShare, eDocs, Hummingbird, HPE Content Manager, Lotus Notes, Atlassian Confluence, Egnyte, BIM 360 and many more.
Tzunami is a critical partner for so many migration scenarios where they are not only the most relevant choice, but they are often a choice that saves hundreds of hours of manual or custom migration work for us.
Valo focuses on a beautiful UI/UX experience with the ability to deploy quickly, since most of the staple features and experiences are baked into the solution. With a variety of solutions that are directly integrated into SharePoint and Microsoft Teams, Valo’s digital workplace products might be the perfect fit for your organization. From their main intranet solution, Valo Intranet, to their ideation solution, Valo Ideas, they are ready to strengthen your digital workplace.
Why they inspire us
What is great about Valo is how effectively they have simplified some of the big Intranet challenges, and done so in a way that is accessible and extremely cost competitive. It’s well built and they are constantly innovating where they see opportunities to further enhance the Microsoft digital workplace offering.
Just like our partners, we continue to push the boundaries of what is deemed possible with Microsoft 365. We hope you have found this blog has opened your eyes to the incredible solutions outside of Microsoft that work with it to improve.
If you are looking for more information on the capabilities of Microsoft 365, we are sure you will find one of our free resources insightful and full with actionable information.
