Thoughts on the Micosoft Worldwide Partner Conference

My view on WPC is that attendance is clearly the first chance Microsoft people have to articulate the plans that they have put in place for the next financial leave. So the timeline is: Set plans for next year, do WPC, put detail on plans.

This means that attending WPC allows partners to get in on what’s new, to remind Microsoft staff they are there and have great plans for Microsoft.

It’s clearly THE event to attend if you want to be part of the next year’s activity. In fact on two occasions it was commented that Partners that attend are seen as having the ‘right level of commitment’ so it was good to be there! My final point about attendance is who and how many, the event is vast and all the Microsoft staff are available to grab which maybe the only opportunity to do so and It presents great opportunities to find organisations that would be good to partner with.

I personally had 13 1:1 partner meetings, attended 3 extra partner events and several comms sector specific events.

Key information is as follows, I’ll bullet point it and expand on the more critical things:

• They see the last 6-9 months as an economic reset


• They will be looking to do more with less


• The focus for this year is more market share not new sales growth. So the messages were all take share from competitors such as VMWare, SFDC, Google, Oracle, IBM etc


• They intend to deepen the partner relationship


• More sales opportunities will result from deeper relationships


• To achieve the above they are revamping the Partner program now called Partner Network, qualification criteria will be much tougher and more levels will be added. They highest level for us will be Advanced Hosting Partner and we will be striving to become an Advanced Hosting partner


• As you’d expect, there’s a strong emphasis given to partners who ‘use the latest technology’ which means for us Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, System centre, Exchange 10, OCS and SQL 2008


• Microsoft CRM Live will hit the streets in Europe 15th April 2010, pricing TBD


• ffice 10 which is very impressive has a full function web version which looks great. It will be FREE to windows live subscribers; it will be FREE to enterprise licence customers. They are gunning for Google Apps!


• Windows 7 is what Vista should have been, Microsoft is expecting massive sales and that it will spark a wave of system refreshes. Windows 7 was available for pre order for the first time last week and sold more in 8 hours than Vista did in 8 weeks


• CRM has just hit 1,000,000 users worldwide and they expect strong growth this year


• Unified Communications is going to be a big push and a new Hosted Exchange program is being launched to help partners make a business out of Exchange, OCS and UC. To qualify partners must already have 3000 Exchange seats


• Azure will be released to paying customers November this year, Pricing has been announced although I haven’t seen it yet. Reselling Azure services may well be important to us

Met lots of other people and had the chance to catch up with our Dynamics partners. In short a busy but wholly worthwhile event!

Registration

The first and most significant thing about going to the Earnest Morial Conventions Centre and seeing inside is the bland look of the place. I know when I arrived at about 10AM Sunday it is early and there are only a few people about but the place feels drab. Also when talking to regular attendees it seems that there is a low key feel compared to previous years. I’m sure it will pick up Monday when the conference starts in earnest. Sorry about the pun!

Anyway I had a very constructive morning passing the time with the original CEO of 7global Karl Roe. Karl looks after SPLA for Microsoft in the Middle East and Africa which is no mean feat. And has possibly the most stamped passport I’ve ever seen.

Even though it’s early in proceedings I’m starting to meet more people including another ex 7global guy Nick Caw who works in the UC arena again for Microsoft in the UK. 7global currently has 3 ex employees who work for Microsoft the other being Martin Walker who mirrors Karl by looking after SPLA in the UK and is due in later today, good to see so many of our people in prominent positions in Microsoft, this probably reflects the fact that we’ve been in the business for a long time providing ASP services back in 2000 and now still out there with SaaS, Incubation Centre and S + S in 2009, ok advert over. I’m just about to have my first meeting of the week. If it goes well it will mean we have found a great addition to our Hosted Dynamics CRM service....

Well the meeting went well, and I hope to progress things when back from WPC. Now there is jazz band playing at maximum volume only a few yards away, great music, just a bit too LOUD. The ability to meet potential partners and add products to our portfolio is my prime objective for the week and although it’s difficult to mention product specifically you will be unsurprised to know that my focus on Mobility, UC, BI and collaboration.

After spending the day in and out of the conference I think that overall there seems to be a big push on Dynamics and the inevitable Windows 7 hype. I also think that there are going to be some big announcements that will have far reaching consequences to hosters like 7global; wave 14 and all that. Talked to some really great people in the 'meet and greet' sessions form places as far apart as Scotland, Mexico and the Middle East.

The most standout thing in that was we all had similar problems and experiences, it is a small world and this certainly is that case when I talk to people at that WW Hosting Summit. That's it for today it's 20:45 and high time I carried on networking, you know what I mean!