If your customer is looking for Exchange/O365 talk to Appriver.com. Several here, myself included, have signed up as a partner. If you are going to push this really hard
@YeOldeStonecat has said that you can make more money on residuals going direct.
Back when O365 first came out, if you were a form of Microsoft Partner....you could sign up as an O365 reseller....and you'd get a small %. I think the first year was 8%, then 6% for second year of the subscription, and then 4% from then on. Something like that....so basically around 6%. Many Microsoft partners were a bit "sore" at the wee tiny cut you'd get...that tiny check from Microsoft.
Back then I had a fear of O365 being buggy, and with little knowledge about it, since I had been an Appriver partner for so many years prior to that (their Secure Tide filtering, and their Cipher encryption)....I used them for O365 for a few clients back then....and their commission check is (or was back the) 6%. Yup I'll agree they are fantastic....Great support..and great sales team, great engineers...I spent quite a bit of time working on some custom solutions with their engineers.
But then O365 started taking off more. Becoming a real solid thing. And you've all heard me preach here..."Become official resellers, build your volume direct with the vendor, cut out middle men, it will benefit you down the road". We already had a long partner status with Microsoft with other products....keep that going. The regional reps from Microsoft contacted us...as we were on their radar, and they were working on pushing out their cloud services, and we had a meeting with them where they introduced their CSP program. "Cloud Solutions Provider". Instead of those measly 6% commission checks....you'd get ...I think from 10% or 12% to start....up to high 20's%. Depending on your history and volume. The more you sell, the higher your tier, and your % commission goes up.
As for my fear of O365...and supporting it....turns out that fear was not needed. We already knew Exchange well...after installing and supporting it since version 5.5. And, as we've found, Microsoft support of O365 is really not bad...pretty decent actually (considering it's overseas Delhi support). It has not caused me problems. And...hey, we make our living from supporting small businesses. Combine monthly support with recurring commissions from selling subscriptions...that's what helps put steak on my dinner plate. And money from migrations puts those bottles of expensive wine on my dinner table.
