Westcon-Comstor Sub-Saharan Africa has launched its Azure Virtual Vault partner programme in Kenya.

The programme is an interactive digital experience designed to assist partners to accelerate their Microsoft Azure business, drive Azure competencies, facilitate training and increase business growth, in a simplified and gamified way.

Westcon-Comstor describes Azure Virtual Vault as a gamified digital platform that assesses a partner's competencies around a range of specific Azure workloads.

The company says partners can use the platform to garner a better understanding of Azure in an engaging and interactive way, as well as earn and receive rewards after specific training milestones are achieved and workloads are unlocked within the vault. Through the simplification of an often-daunting process, resellers can unlock business rewards in the form of free assessments, Marketing as a Service, and access to technical expertise to name a few.

The primary workloads loaded within the Azure Virtual Vault include Migrating Virtual Machines to Azure, Azure Backup and Site Recovery, Building a Modern Datawarehouse and Azure IOT. Each workload includes a gamified assessment, which when complete unlocks a first round of rewards, once all assessments are complete, partners are provided with a code to try and crack the Azure Virtual Vault which is filled with a host of high-value rewards.

Westcon-Comstor first announced the roll out of the programme in August 2019 and has confirmed the offering's availability to Kenyan reseller partners.

"... partners will move through stages that map out the various technology layers and workloads within Azure. Each stage within the process is linked to a reward and partners can navigate and track their progress within the online portal," the company explains.

Key sections of the Vault include developing better knowledge of Azure and its benefits through its Pizza-as-a-Service journey that extend the types and uses of Azure when deploying different cloud computing models for clients, as well as specific training on four pre-determined Azure workloads.

Thiani Ramaya, Microsoft Lead at Westcon-Comstor Sub-Saharan Africa, said, "Kenya is embracing the cloud and driving digital initiatives across the board. It is seen as one of the most digitally transformed and progressive technology-savvy countries on the African continent, and as a result much of this culture of innovation is being driven to a cloud-first approach. Azure plays a big role in the cloud play of many of Kenya's private sector businesses and ties into the country's Vision 2030, a national long-term development policy that aims to transform Kenya into a 'newly industrialising middle-income country' - using technology."

Ramaya continues: "Kenya is the second country in Africa to which we have rolled out our Azure Virtual Vault programme, with other regions currently being planned for the near future. The Kenyan government's focus on digital transformation through its Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology, where it aims to encourage socio-economic growth and development through the innovation and promotion of information and communication technology has created a culture of digital innovation. We believe our Virtual Vault will help partners in the region to help customers as scale with their cloud journey."