1A becomes Microsoft Gold Partner

A few years ago it was still unthinkable, but now the time has come: 1A becomes Microsoft Gold Partner. Of course that also has to do with the use of Office 365 and Windows based terminal environments by many of our partners and customers. The decisive factor, however, is the transformation at Microsoft.

Microsoft’s transformation to an open source company

At the end of 2016, Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member, last October they joined the LOT Network, which protects developers from patent trolling, and in recent years have opensourced several of their proprietary software.

Now they are taking the next step by joining the Open Innovation Network. The members of OIN grant mutual licenses for Linux technology and promise not to sue each other with patent claims in this area. Microsoft has a patent portfolio of no less than 60,000 patents.

Erich Andersen is Microsoft’s corporate vice president and chief intellectual property (IP) counsel. In a blog about the subject he stated:

At Microsoft, we take it as a given that developers do not want a binary choice between Windows vs. Linux, or .NET vs Java – they want cloud platforms to support all technologies. They want to deploy technologies at the edge – on any device – that meet customer needs.

We wholeheartedly agree with Andersen! The full blog article can be read on the Microsoft Azure website.

With this certification we are better able to respond to the needs of our customers. It complements our already extensive collection of in-house IT services. Offering them on Azure or other public cloud platforms is therefore not part of our strategy for the time being.

The data of our customers is sacred. That is why our own infrastructure is, as always, an essential part of this guarantee. We will elaborate on this in a next article. In the meantime, Office 365 users will be able to enjoy increasingly complete integrations with our own IT services, such as making O365 accounts available in the 1A-manager.