Skykick has outgrown its image as a company with an Office 365 migration tool.
The company has expanded with cloud backup and cloud management offerings, essentially going from trying to help partners and customers move one aspect of their Microsoft environment to the cloud to trying to help them move completely to Microsoft’s cloud offering.
Today, the Seattle-based company announced that its Cloud Backup solution is being included as a free product in Microsoft’s Internal Use Rights (IUR) program.
The SkyKick Cloud Backup solution
The program, which runs until June 30, 2016, allows partners to make use of the backup solution (as well as SkyKick’s Office 365 Migration Suites through the Office 365 IUR program) for their own environments free of charge.
The Microsoft Partner Network gives eligible partners access to internal use rights licenses for Microsoft Azure and other Microsoft cloud solutions, including Office 365, Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite, Microsoft Power BI Pro, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Visual Studio Online and Project Online.
“Essentially, partners that sign up for it during the program will be getting it free forever,” Evan Richman, one of SkyKick’s co-CEOs told CDN. “The purpose is to help partners transition economically to the cloud and make use of the new revenue stream.
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The platform is designed to make it easier to start using Microsoft Azure. The Cloud Backup application allows for cloud-to-cloud backup, unlimited storage and instantaneous recovery of Office 365 data, especially from Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft OneDrive for Business and Microsoft SharePoint.
In a way, it’s to get partners to try the SkyKick platform before they decide whether or not to recommend it to their own customers, Richman said. A 30-day trial for customers was already available and is not affected by the announcement.
“It’s a risk-free way to try it,” he said. “What we want to do is adopt and learn a technology to use in their business”