Mike Rocco
Two Microsoft veterans have left the mother ship to launch 3Cloud LLC, an IT consulting firm focused on the Microsoft Azure cloud. 3Cloud's services include cloud modernization, advanced data analytics, Internet of things (IoT) and cloud application development for Azure.
3Cloud co-founders, CEO Mike Rocco and Chief Revenue Officer Jim Dietrich, are former Microsoft technology and sales executives. They have a combined 45 years of industry experience. Their focus areas have included Fortune 2000 customer engagements across across financial services, retail, manufacturing and professional services, the duo says.
At Microsoft, Rocco and Dietrich were general managers who led a combined $2 billion corporate accounts organization serving more than 4500 customers with revenues between $50 million and $2 billion, across 18 U.S. central region states, the duo says.
Rocco and Dietrich also have channel experience. At Microsoft, they led direct and channel go-to-market efforts, helping both customers and channel partners adopt Microsoft cloud platforms, the duo says.
Azure: Channel Partners Rise
3Cloud's launch reinforces growing partner interest in Azure. Amid tight reseller margins for Office 365, many partners are now looking toward Azure for more revenue opportunities.
Justin Crotty
Jamison West
MSPs are also buying their way into the Azure market. Aldridge, for instance, earlier this year acquired two MSPs -- Arterian and PacketDrivers -- and then focused some team members on Microsoft-centric cloud monetization. Arterian leader Jamison West has been driving the cloud services push.
And earlier this week, Justin Crotty rejoined NetEnrich to drive that company's channel efforts. Among Crotty's key focus areas: Helping partners to manage, monitor and monetize Azure workloads.
Microsoft has been banging the drum for Azure-related managed services and deployment services. The company, for instance, presented an MSP guide for Azure during Autotask Community Live 2016 in September.
3Cloud: More Than Consultants?
As 3Cloud jumps into the Azure consulting market we're curious to know: Is this purely a professional services play? Or will the company wrap managed services around its consulting experts? We're checking for answers.
In some ways, the 3Cloud mission reminds us of a mini-Avanade -- a Microsoft and Accenture spin-off that assisted customers with early Windows NT Server application projects.
