AvePoint Leads with SharePoint

When AvePoint’s Tony Lanni arrives at the office after time on the road visiting customers and partners he is often greeted by a myriad of unfamiliar faces.

That’s because this global technology and software development shop has experienced dramatic growth in sales and headcount in spite of the lingering effects of the economic slowdown.

What is AvePoint’s secret to prosperity in uncertain times?  They’ve hitched their fortunes to SharePoint, Microsoft’s collaboration and Web publishing platform with sales well north of a billion dollars.

“AvePoint has the largest SharePoint development team in the world,” Lanni told me last week during a sit down the Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference.  “We’re purely a products company with applications in data storage optimization, back-up, archiving and compliance.”

The fourth employee at a company with a current staff size of more than 700, Lanni explained a core part of his mission as AvePoint’s top corporate strategy executive is to closely align their product development and marketing strategy with Microsoft.  And that means Lanni’s been thinking a lot about the cloud.

“They (Microsoft) are engaging more aggressively in dialogue with partners about their cloud strategy,” he said.  “It’s not just Microsoft telling us.  They’re looking for insight and direction from the partner community, and that’s very encouraging.”

Lanni had to run to his next meeting as his agenda was saturated with more than 100 sit downs during the week long conference.

“The value of this conference is the face-to-face meetings and interactions with Microsoft,” Lanni said in parting.

Note:  this post was originally published in the "Microsoft Partner News" blog.