ISP in Poland Expands Business by Combining
Global Cloud Services with Local Support
Partner: home.pl
Website: home.pl
Partner Size: 250 employees
Country or Region: Poland
Industry: Professional services—IT
services
Customer Profile
home.pl is one of the largest Internet
service providers for small and midsize
businesses in Central and Eastern Europe.
More than 350,000 companies rely on
home.pl as their link to the digital world.
Software and Services
 Microsoft Intune
 Microsoft Office 365
“We are using Office 365 to increase our revenues and
enlarge our customer base. About 40 percent of our
customers that have purchased Office 365 are new
customers for us.”
Marcin Kuśmierz, Chief Executive Officer, home.pl
If you’re already one of the largest and most successful Internet
service providers (ISPs) in your market, how do you keep
growing? home.pl of Poland joined the Microsoft Cloud Solution
Provider program and added Microsoft Office 365 to its already
broad service portfolio, augmenting the solution with local
training, support, and billing. With this new offering, home.pl
provides time- and money-saving cloud services while extending
its core business.
Founded in 1997, home.pl is a key hosting
services and Internet service provider in
Poland. The company serves individuals,
international corporations, financial
institutions, and public-sector
organizations, but its primary market is
small and midsize businesses (SMBs) that
need help navigating the digital world and
deploying appropriate technology.
home.pl is their guide and partner,
providing email services, domain names,
website hosting, cloud services, and more.
Simplify the Cloud for SMBs
For more information about other
Microsoft customer successes, please visit:
customers.microsoft.com
Although home.pl is one of the country’s
biggest IT businesses, with 250 employees
and more than 350,000 customers, it’s
always looking for new ways to grow and
solve customer problems. The company
knew that the best way to achieve both
goals lay in expanding its cloud services. In
addition to its domain registration and
web hosting services, home.pl offered
some cloud solutions, primarily cloud
storage, but wanted to go further.
“We are always looking for new
technologies and services that help
customers improve their productivity and
reduce costs,” says Marcin Kuśmierz, Chief
Executive Officer at home.pl. “SMBs want
to use new cloud services but find them
complex. They want one vendor to manage
it all, from sales to support to renewal.”
Combine Global Cloud with Local
Support
Already a member of the Microsoft Partner
Network, home.pl decided to join the
Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider program.
The program allows partners to sell
Microsoft cloud services, such as Microsoft
Office 365 and Microsoft Intune, along with
their own offerings. Partners own the
complete customer life cycle through
provisioning, management, billing, and
support.
Office 365 is a collection of cloud
productivity services that includes the
familiar Microsoft Office applications, email,
document sharing, file storage, and
videoconferencing. Intune is a cloud-based
mobile device management service.
home.pl felt that the Cloud Solution
Provider program resonated with its
business approach. “We are able to add our
products and services alongside Office 365
to grow our market share and provide a
valuable service to scores of entrepreneurs
whom we have supported for many years,”
says Kuśmierz. “Now we can provide a
unique opportunity for customers to
purchase a complete set of cloud
productivity services through one point of
contact.”
home.pl takes care of setting up customers
on Office 365, migrating their email
mailboxes to the cloud, providing
employees with training on the latest Office
applications and other Office 365 services,
and supplying local technical support and
billing in Polish. Soon, home.pl will package
its existing web hosting, domain
registration, and additional services with
Office 365 and other Microsoft cloud
services, such as Microsoft Azure. Azure is a
set of cloud-based datacenter services that
includes virtual machines, networks, and
storage.
“A major competitive advantage for us is
our ability to provide continuous technical
support for Office 365 in Polish, and to bill
for Microsoft cloud services in Polish
currency and include required domestic
taxes,” says Kuśmierz.
with the service in approaching new
accounts. Giving customers and prospects
an easy way to upgrade to the latest
version of Office is a successful sales leadin because so many SMBs depend heavily
on Office applications.
Save Customers Time and Money
The value proposition for customers is the
ability to get the latest technology with the
least amount of work and expense. KS
Services, a human resources consulting
firm and home.pl customer, subscribes to
Office 365 through home.pl because of the
local, comprehensive support that home.pl
provides. “We have been home.pl
customers since 2013 and have always
appreciated the high level of support and
availability that it provides,” says Marcin
Szyszka, Board Member at KS Services.
“With home.pl providing our Office 365
services, we have one phone number that
we call to solve every problem, whether it
relates to domains, servers, Office 365
services, or billing. We always get fast,
accurate answers from home.pl.”
“We are using Office 365 to increase our
revenues and enlarge our customer base,”
says Kuśmierz. “About 40 percent of our
customers that have purchased Office 365
are new customers for us. We see
tremendous growth ahead. And when
existing customers extend their home.pl
portfolios with Office 365, they are less
likely to leave—so it serves to solidify the
relationships that we have already built.”
Provide Local, Knowledgeable Support
Through the Office 365 onboarding
process, home.pl developed its own Office
365 pre-sales and post-sales competencies
so that it can offer highly skilled resources
to customers. By accelerating employee
Office 365 expertise, home.pl can resolve
customer issues faster.
“We are currently expanding our dedicated
support team and, with help from
Microsoft, deepening our knowledge so
we can improve support and meet
customer expectations,” says Kuśmierz.
“We maintain continuous contact with the
Polish Microsoft team, who provide fast,
professional assistance in emergency
situations.”
Win New Customers, Deepen Existing
Relationships
home.pl is in the process of presenting
Office 365 to all 350,000 of its existing
accounts and asking its sales force to lead
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published March 2015
By offering Office 365, home.pl enjoys a
distinct advantage over its competitors,
many of which deliver open-source-based
productivity solutions. “Open-source
solutions do not enjoy the same level of
trust in Poland that Microsoft-based
solutions have,” says Kuśmierz. “We are
already a Polish market leader in hosting,
domains, and e-commerce, and we want
our name to be synonymous with offering
Office 365 also. The Cloud Solution
Provider program is a fast path to making
that happen.”