OpenText Reps Pitch Microsoft Copilot, Cybersecurity Prowess

Employees also told solution providers executives about how OpenText can help with a Microsoft incentive for $1,500 for every completed workshop conducted with customers.

Just ahead of OpenText’s latest earnings call revealing $1.27 billion in quarterly revenues and its OpenText World event later this month, representatives of the Canadian conglomerate pitched rooms of solution providers on its latest capabilities in cybersecurity and as a Microsoft distributor.

For the cybersecurity side of the business, Jason Myers, a channel sales specialist in MSP cybersecurity with Waterloo, Ontario-based OpenText, told a crowd of solution providers about Pillr, a managed detection and response platform OpenText acquired in May.

In a separate talk for the Microsoft distributor business, Lynda Mahabir, OpenText’s lead Microsoft partner success manager, donned makeup as a life-size version of Microsoft Copilot to read off the virtual assistant’s responses to inquiries by Liz Nunez, OpenText’s senior Microsoft partner development manager, and show how Copilot can help salespeople with day-to-day tasks.

Mahabir and Nunez also told attendees about how OpenText can help with a Microsoft incentive for $1,500 for every completed workshop conducted with customers.

The talks were part of CRN parent The Channel Company’s XChange NexGen 2024. OpenText World is Nov. 18 to 21 in Las Vegas.

[RELATED: Microsoft CEO: AI Provides ‘On-Ramp’ To Azure Data Services, Copilot Continues To Surge]

OpenText Cybersecurity, Microsoft Copilot

Luis Armendaris, CEO of Doral, Fla.-based solution provider and OpenText partner Gordon Lewis Group, told CRN in an interview after the Copilot presentation that he appreciated the real-life examples of the virtual assistant in action.

As for his AI business, he said that customers are curious and that he’s been setting up safe sandboxes for experimentation. “They’ll start asking questions to pull up contracts or, ‘Show me anything related to a client,’ for example,” Armendaris said. “And they can start seeing that, just to protect that there's no PII (personally identifiable information) or anything.”

Georgette Fraser-Moore, CEO of Tucker, Ga.-based Transformation Lead, told CRN in an interview after the Pillr presentation that her solution provider’s endpoint detection, compliance, virtual SOC and other security practices are growing.

“Sometimes it’s put on the back burner, so we're making sure that it's on the front burner for every client, partner or anyone that we’re working with right now,” Fraser-Moore said.

She has been evaluating more best-in-class tools to complement her existing offerings, she said.

OpenText And Pillr

Greg Luebke, channel sales manager at OpenText, told a crowd of solution providers that on Nov. 13, OpenText Secure Cloud will include Pillar will be in Secure Cloud

Earlier this month, OpenText revealed an expansion of its Secure Cloud platform and plans to rename Pillr OpenText MDR.

Myers said that Pillr is vendor agnostic, built for MSPs and shows alerts, vulnerabilities and agents online, among other features. He called Pillr complementary to endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools, which usually catch 50 percent of cyber threats.

Pillar is useful for risky applications and operating systems in need of patching. Myers said that his team has seen a surge in state-sponsored malware inside of browser extensions.

The OpenText tool also includes monitoring to find copycat domains with a risk score, with users allowed to export the list and import it into firewalls for blocking. Myers said a potential future capability for the product is automatic pushing of the data into firewall blocking rules.

On OpenText’s Thursday call reporting its quarterly earnings–covering its first fiscal quarter, ended Sept. 30–CEO and chief technology officer Mark Barrenechea told listeners that the vendor will deliver an extended detection response (XDR)-as-a-service offer and plans to improve its IT operations management (ITOM) portfolio, according to a call transcript.

“We see security being a growth driver for us,” Barrenechea said.

OpenText And Microsoft Copilot

During the Microsoft Copilot distribution and consulting event, Nunez demonstrated a variety of prompts a salesperson can use to improve their daily workload with the AI tool.

Her prompts included:

• Draft a persuasive email to send to a variety of prospects
• Request a complete list of car dealerships in her area, with Copilot providing location addresses, number of locations, employee counts and sales data
• Schedule a call based on availability in Outlook’s calendar
• Prepare a quote based on the user’s price list for smaller businesses–Copilot also recommended throwing in an applicable 15 percent offer from Microsoft
• Recap a meeting and reading the sentiment of the conversation, recalling when the prospect was most interested
• Create a pitch deck for a prospect based on details from email interactions and putting the prospect’s logo on the front page

“The reason why it's so important to understand the value of Microsoft 365 Copilot is because there are so many individuals, SMB companies and users that are really struggling with data that they have to go through,” Mahabir said. “They lack the energy to get their work done. They lack the time to innovate and to strategize.”

Nunez encouraged attendees to look into Microsoft CSP Briefings, 60- to 90-minute demonstrations partners bring to customers to show how to use Copilot, Defender for Business, Windows 365, Teams Phone and other products that bring partners about $1,500 per completed workshop with at least three customers per workshop.

She also reminded partners to update billing profiles and renew legacy Microsoft Gold and Silver partner benefits if they are eligible–partners with renewal dates after Jan. 21, 2025, are eligible for those benefits until Sept. 30, 2025.

She also highlighted the incentive structure Microsoft has for some of its products, including:

• A Core Modern Work and Security billed revenue incentive rate of 3.75 percent, bringing in a maximum incentive opportunity of $93,750
• A tier one global strategic product accelerator with a rate of 5 percent for the U.S., bringing in a maximum incentive earning opportunity of $125,000 for Microsoft 365 E3 customers
• A tier two product accelerator with a 7 percent rate bringing in a maximum incentive earning opportunity of $175,000 for M365 E5 customers
• A global calling and conference public switched telephone network (PSTN) accelerator with a 20 percent rate

“That could amount to a good amount of money on the back end,” Nunez said. “Who doesn't like making money?”

On OpenText’s earnings call Thursday, CEO Barrenechea told listeners that “we’ve gotten closer with our biggest partner in (small and midsize businesses), Microsoft,” according to a transcript.

As for OpenText’s own AI business, Barrenechea said that the OpenText Aviator data analytics platform brought in 20 customer wins during the quarter. The vendor also plans to showcase at OpenText World an internal sales AI tool used to generate proposals and accelerate sales velocity.

“We see AI as a long-term opportunity and a key priority for the company,” he said.