Sitecore enters Global partnership with Avanade

On November 1st, the news about the Sitecore / Avanade partnership was finally official. I have been eagerly waiting to share the story since early summer, but in respect of our corporate marketing team, I have kept quiet until now.

Teaming up with a player like Avanade is an important step for us in Sitecore, as Avanade’s organization of 16.000+ employees, as well as their focus on Microsoft based technologies and digital solutions, will help Sitecore reach even further - and to even larger clients. This is also a stamp of approval, that everything Sitecore has worked hard to achieve (see the recent Gartner MQ report), now materializes and is backed up by such an important group.

As this partnership has been in effect for months and counting, with a few public statements along the way, the foundation is already quite solid. Without disclosing exact numbers, Avanade is by far the partner with most Sitecore certified developers on board (to list one key parameter). Avanade has definitely set the bar for other Sitecore Partners to follow.

 

My role in this is fairly simple, as I was early on appointed to help facilitate and connect Avanade peers to the proper Sitecore contacts to get things moving fast. This was mainly for assisting with their numerous training requests as well as presales related needs. As they are a big organization, it at times felt almost like “whack a mole” with new people in need of information popping up constantly. I have also had the pleasure of meeting some of the involved Avanade managers during this partnership start-up (check my LinkedIn if you are curious) throughout 2012, and must say I am impressed with their involvement and dedication.

I can only speak on behalf of Sitecore International and the combined efforts with Avanade throughout Europe, which so far has manifested in several co-sponsored events followed by interesting discussions with leading brands. But this appears as the beginning of something big, especially given the already closed deals deriving from this partnership, as well as the building pipeline. For the rest of Sitecore, it appears they have similar ongoing success – one example being Sonnenkraft and their Sitecore solution running on Azure.

 

Now we just have to keep up with Avanade’s ambitious plans, as well as their need for sales and presales support across the globe. Looking forward to support this ongoing, and now official, challenge…