It's not all bad news, this Microsoft Software Plus Services strategy. In fact,
for some partners, it's very, very good news.
This
week's freak-out about the partner model for S+S isn't universal. RCPU spoke
to one partner who was just fine with the notion of Microsoft
competing with his business -- and, in fact, he welcomed it.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 07/10/20080 comments
Doug Kennedy sees the potential in Microsoft Dynamics. He also knows that Redmond
needs to work on its approach to the enterprise software product line.
The long-time Oracle veteran signed on to Redmond in March and is now vice
president of Microsoft Dynamics Partners. He's got a vision to fine-tune --
there's no overhaul needed -- Dynamics and help the suites continue to eat away
at the market share of SAP as well as that of Kennedy's former employer.
Kennedy is excited, first off, about Microsoft's plan to differentiate channel
members in the partner program with good-better-best competency designations
(see RCP's exclusive coverage here).
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Posted by Lee Pender on 07/10/20080 comments
Steve Ballmer has a message for partners who are worried about competition
from Microsoft: That's the way it goes.
Well, OK, that's an oversimplification, but Ballmer, in response to a question
during Wednesday morning's Worldwide Partner Conference keynote,
said that Microsoft has to host its own applications or surrender the market
to its competitors.
And he said that Microsoft's hosting model will grow faster than those of partners:
"Cloud services will grow faster than the hosting opportunity, but that
doesn't mean hosting won't grow," Ballmer told a crowd at Houston's Toyota
Center Wednesday. He fielded pre-screened questions from partners asked by Geoff
Colvin, editor at large of Fortune magazine. Colvin and Fortune
narrowly won the Q&A gig over RCPU. OK, we just made that last sentence
up.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 07/09/20080 comments
Microsoft has combined its Identity and Access Division with its Access and Security Division -- and not just because both groups had "Access" in their names.
Before we continue, is anybody else thinking what I'm thinking? You got chocolate in my peanut butter! You got peanut butter in my chocolate! OK, maybe not. Sorry, it's been a long conference already. And we like Reese's. (The theme there was famous combinations, in case you were wondering.)
Anyway, the new group, officially minted July 1 to coincide with the beginning of Microsoft's fiscal 2009, is the Identity & Security Business Group -- which sounds like some sort of New Age work therapy session, but we digress. What it is, though, is a group that makes a lot of sense, in that it combines marketing and engineering efforts for products that complement each other.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 07/09/20080 comments
There was a Vista partner panel at the Worldwide Partner Conference on Tuesday:
Three partners sat in a small conference room and talked about their Vista experiences
at the prompting of a Forrester analyst. They said a lot of stuff, but it's
what they
didn't
say that really stuck with us.
They said that developers in their organizations loved Vista -- and developers
do tend to love it. They talked about certification processes. They discussed
driver compatibility problems a little bit. But, by design or otherwise, they
stayed miles away from the real issue surrounding the beleaguered operating
system: user acceptance.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 07/09/20082 comments
This week's announcement
at the Worldwide Partner Conference of Microsoft's partner model for its Software Plus Services initiative has led to a fairly predictable freak-out among partners.
But if the mother ship's S+S model seems to wrest control of customers away from channel members, little Microsoft satellite Tellme's budding partner program leaves partners firmly in control of their accounts. Microsoft bought Tellme, a SaaS telephony company, last year, and the little principality of Microsoft's great nation still has a fair amount of independence. It's even headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., rather than in Redmond.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 07/09/20080 comments
The haze has lifted, mostly. Not the haze that perennially envelops steamy
Houston during the summer, but the haze that has hung over Microsoft's Software
Plus Services strategy and the question of exactly how S+S will affect partners.
And the news isn't necessarily good.
 |
Ravi
Agarwal |
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Posted by Lee Pender on 07/08/20080 comments
It's a question we've heard a lot in the last couple of days: Who decided to
hold a conference in Houston in July?
Well, Microsoft did, and the thousands of partners who are descending upon
the city this week will likely be met with a Texas-style welcome: temperatures
in the 90s (today's high topped out at a relatively cool 92) and high humidity.
Great.
Maybe it's your editor's bias toward Dallas-Fort Worth (mainly Fort Worth),
but RCPU has never been a huge fan of Houston. As a native Texan, your editor
knows and loves huge swaths of his home state -- Austin, San Antonio, the Hill
Country, parts of the Gulf Coast, the desert mountains of West Texas and, of
course, Cowtown (or Funkytown, or whatever you want to call Fort Worth). Texas
can be beautiful.
[Click for larger view.] |
But RCPU came to Houston expecting to spend a lot of time in the hotel, and,
well...we've been pleasantly surprised. The RCPU team -- four strong for this
event -- strolled over to a downtown steakhouse Monday evening for dinner after
the show and had a great time and a spectacular meal. Then, we strolled back
by Minute Maid Park -- the Astros' stadium, which, we have to say, looks kind
of funny from the outside -- and over to a place called Discovery Green.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 07/08/20080 comments
These Microsoft people aren't stupid. When he was preparing his speech for
this week's Worldwide Partner Conference, Stephen Elop, Redmond newbie and president
of the Microsoft Business Division, clearly knew that
this
week's news
about how Software Plus Services will affect partners would
lead to something of a freak-out. And so it did.
That's probably why Elop made a point to hold partners' hands in Tuesday morning's
keynote -- to tell them that while Microsoft, the industry and the channel have
to change, Redmond wouldn't think of going it alone without its partners. He
rattled off the numbers: more than 500,000 partners in the partner program,
96 percent of Microsoft's revenues generated by partners, $7 earned for a partner
for every $1 earned for Microsoft, $5.4 billion in projected SharePoint sales
for partners in the year ahead.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 07/08/20080 comments
Yeesh, this is kind of ugly. The "tel" (or just the "Intel,"
depending on how you read it) in Wintel is
saying
no to Vista
.
There's really nothing left to say here, but we're sort of enjoying looking
at the Vista car wreck from the traffic jam on the (hello, early '90s phrase)
information superhighway.
Suggestions to Microsoft, which finally (mostly) killed XP yesterday: Bring
back XP, get Windows 7 down to being manageable, and let us all forget about
Vista. In other words, listen to most of your customers and partners. Please.
Posted by Lee Pender on 07/02/20080 comments
It's the biggest show of the year for Microsoft Partners and the biggest event
of the year for
Redmond Channel Partner
magazine and RCPU alike: It's
the
Microsoft
Worldwide Partner Conference
, and it kicks off next week in Houston.
Before you go, you simply must check out RCP's
preview video, starring your editor and RCP Editor in Chief Scott
Bekker (although not necessarily in that order -- you might say that this video
has no lone star).
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Posted by Lee Pender on 07/02/20081 comments