More crystal ball gazing...

So it's the start of another year. Indeed, it's the start of a new decade. One thing that we've been reflecting on is how much of the SaaS hype of the noughties has been...well, hype.

This article has some nice insights that steers clear of the "is it good? Short answer yes with an if, long answer no with a but" that some analysts provide at this time of the year.

Our experience is that people are consuming SaaS apps at a rate of knots. Hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a prime example with sales consistently higher month on month and retention good as well.

7global shortlisted in CRN Channel Awards

Found out we've been shortlisted for the CRN Channel Awards. Huzzar! Pleased with that as it's based on the relationships with partners and clients that we've developed over the years. It's for the Reseller ‘Services Provider of the Year’ so it's right up our street.

A lot of our business, especially within the Dynamics space, is based on these strong business relationships so it's great from my perspective.

So, I'll cut to the chase and ask you to vote for us! All you need to do is click here, (briefly) register and then select the 'Reseller' category and the 'Services Provider of the Year’ sub category and give us your vote. Wow- I sound like a politician. Actually, scrub that (it's hardly a vote winner these days!).

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!

Genesis acquires Increase...and then there were two.

Interesting to read about Genesis's acquisition of Increase CRM earlier this month. The acquisition creates a very large organisation actively promoting hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This has got me thinking and crystallising what I think of the state of play in the UK marketplace.

One trigger to my thought process was pulled when I was asked recently by a partner what I thought about the deal. Was I pleased that there was one less piranha in the tank? Or was a nervous that there was an even bigger shark in the tank that had just eaten the piranha and was now devouring everything in the tank with the ferocity of a starving megaladon? Ok, he didn't phrase it quite like that but briefly that's what it sounded like.

My feelings are that this is a Good Thing. There's no doubt that having a large telco (Genesis), which has acquired what was in all but name a Microsoft Dynamics CRM boutique with a 100% dedication to the hosted market (Increase) has created a powerful competitor.

However, I think 7global's partner network really offers a strong alternative. 7global's partners are large and small, cover the whole of the UK (and a lot of Europe), have specialisms in most verticals, with staff specially trained to deal with those industries.

By acquiring Increase Genesis has definitively moved from a 'wholesale' approach to a full service approach, which will certainly compete with other Dynamics Partners which should heat up the marketplace a little more. As a telco they had a telco approach to CRM, just as 7global has a hosting provider approach. Now they have a Dynamics Partner approach. Will be interesting to see how that pans out.

One advantage of our approach is we can marry our hosting expertise to partners Dynamics CRM expertise which I think creates the more compelling solution. However, if Genesis draws attention to the value of a hosted solution I will be there applauding.

New Year, New Hangover, New Challenges

So, 2008’s gone and 2009 is here. 2008 is already being clumsily auto archived by my brain so it now seems like a year ago as opposed to a few days. However, addled by Christmas and New Year festivities though my poor brain is, I think it is on to something. 2009 certainly will be throwing up brand new challenges in the marketplace and as firms seem to be going bust everyday, knowing who will be here and who will not is a scary consideration.

That said, from 7global’s perspective the message we can bring to businesses is, if anything, even stronger. Essentially, organisations still need cutting edge IT solutions to compete. I would say that is even more important as margins are cut and marketplace is squeezed. Rather than employing new staff or redirecting existing employees I think we have an extremely powerful ‘spend money with us to save money’ message.

Take hosted applications, like Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Exchange. Why spend money building and maintaining an infrastructure, 24 x 7 management, buying hardware and training staff unless absolutely necessary (I concede there will be times when on premise is the only solution)?

Take bespoke managed hosting. Why go through the very real pain of providing a top tier hosting environment when you can plumb in your solution to an existing infrastructure (preferably ours!) which manages all the pain for you? Or hire consultants to specify solutions when we can do that for you as well as deploy it?

Take outsourced network services. With 7global managing firewall, SSL-VPNs and other on premise devices it can take the hassle and cost out of using new or existing staff on doing something on which we can bring our engineering and support teams, not to mention special relations with vendors such as SonicWALL and Cisco, to bear.

Something to ponder over your Alka-Seltzer, perhaps…

Musings on the channel

Living in the business development world like I do I'm always looking closely at (obsessing over?) where we succeed and where we fail. It's essential to understand both (although I much prefer looking at the former rather than the latter for obvious reasons). It's also hard to get to the real truth as it can often be a case of success having many parents and failure being an orphan.

We have built a very successful, vibrant channel for Hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM in a very short period of time (less than a year) despite a very real initial scepticism about the hosted model and in the face of some very stiff and very slick competition.

One thing has been our resolute and complete insistence on a channel model. We do not sell direct. We do not offer consultancy, training, development or any of that good stuff our partners do. On one level this has been hard. There's a lot of good money in adding these services. On the other hand it was a 'no brainer' and I'll tell you why.

We're a hosting company! We're not a CRM house. Our people, skill sets, expertise, business acumen, infrastructure, ongoing investments, [deep breath] internal mechanisms, ideology, partnerships and approach have been forged on the anvil of hosted services, not Microsoft Dynamics consultancy. By not trying to fix what ain't broken I think we've been able to provide something that the Dynamics Partner community, largely, really wants. A specialist Microsoft-based hosting provider which is really rather good at delivering applications on demand. As opposed to a really rather rubbish Dynamics Partner that happens to do hosting, which was the alternative.

By grasping this nettle I think we've carved a good niche for ourselves. We're not a telco-doing-hosting-as-well nor are we a Dynamics-Partner-doing-hosting-as-well. We're a hoster doing hosting. Makes sense really.

Please ignore the fact that this post has sidestepped what we do badly- I will go into this, probably on a Monday morning when I'm feeling hacked off. :-)

7global- the wanderers return

I've just come back from some European events. Sounds very glamorous but actually pretty intense, and extremely worthwhile.

Last week (18-20 November) saw two 7global representatives (Paul Doherty and Mike Williams) in wonderful Copenhagen for Convergence 2008, the annual Microsoft European conference on all things Dynamics. for those unfamiliar with 7global we are a leading provider of hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM and so it was great to run into some of our partners, make some new friends and talk about what we've been doing in the year (lifetime?) since last year's event.

One of the things we were particularly interested in was QGate's CRMMigrate product. CRMMigrate allows the (allegedly) legions of disgruntled Salesforce.com users who are hacked off with the usability of the SFDC system but like the hosted model to migrate over to Hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM. We're offering users free 30 day trials with their own live data to see how simple it is. You can find out more here.

Copenhagen is a lovely place but it was a very busy 48 hours so we didn't get to see much of it. A highlight was Microsoft Corporate Vice President Kirill Tatarinov singing karaoke, a regular fixture which never fails to...entertain. Took lots of Tuborg to drown out the memory.

Sunday, 7global (this time Chris Bithell and Paul Doherty) were in Athens for the EMEA Hosting Club (24-25 November). Great to see all our industry colleagues and Microsoft guys who have been helping us over the months and years. Lots of exciting stuff happening- very invigorating, very exciting. Back in the office now to start building on some of the inspiration.