Partner Points
Readers Respond July 2005
Readers welcome RCP and look forward to having a forum where they can voice their opinions to Microsoft and the channel itself. Plus, some responses to the question, "What Would You Do If You Ran Microsoft?"
Maximizing Value
As a long-time Microsoft Partner, we welcome the introduction of
a new periodical focused on how organizations like ours can find
even more success in the pursuit of delivering outstanding service
to our clients by partnering with Microsoft. The Microsoft Partner
Program has improved greatly in the last few years and I would hope
that your magazine would help us maximize the value of that relationship.
I would also like to encourage you to have more articles on successful
partnering between solution providers to better serve our clients
and capture more new business [see "
Partnering for Success"].
Bob Whiton
Managing Director/CEO, Net Solutions Inc.
Tustin, Calif.
Community of Companies
Congratulations on the debut of Redmond Channel Partner.
As a Microsoft Partner, we are pleased to see a publication focused
on the community of companies working with Microsoft to help organizations
everywhere successfully leverage technology. We look forward to
not only sharing our success stories and lessons learned but also
learning from the best practices and insight from other partners
and analysts.
Robert Stalick
President & CEO, Internosis
Greenbelt, Md.
Channel Cross-Talk
As a member of the partner community, I feel we need a magazine
that can express the opinions of the channel to Microsoft as well
as feed a wide variety of strategy and technology back to the channel.
Additionally, I encourage you to find a way to create some valuable
channel cross-talk so those of us in the channel can learn from
each other.
Bill Breslin
Director, Insource Technology Corp.
Houston, Texas
Vehicle to Communicate
The idea of Redmond Channel Partner magazine is a very good
one, if for no other reason than it represents a vehicle to address the
Microsoft Partner community as a true community with its own perspectives,
priorities, needs and concerns. There are ways to interact with
the technical side(s) of this community—but there really
is no vehicle that addresses all aspects of what it means to "partner"
around the Microsoft product set. And this includes the communications
between and among the partners themselves, who have a lot to share.
For what it's worth, that's the opinion of someone who has spent
20-plus years working in the system integration and application
development spaces. In my current role as CEO of an ISV focused
on the Microsoft space, I also see great value in the new magazine
as a vehicle to communicate with our targeted partner community!
Mickey McIntire
CEO, String Bean Software Inc.
Gaithersburg, Md.
Services & Solutions
We enjoy our partnership with Microsoft but feel it is very point-of-sale
focused. We provide professional services, and recommend products
to customers. But most of our customers have already purchased the
Microsoft product and are looking for someone to do installation/migration
services.
We would very much like to see a column on delivering Microsoft
professional services solutions. Something we have been looking
for for some time are actual statistics on how much TCO (or implementation
costs) would decrease if the customer used professional services
instead of attempting the project internally with untrained resources.
Maybe articles on how other partners are innovating in Microsoft
professional services—new types of consulting services,
success stories, specific case studies, etc.
Gerald Lack
Operations Manager, Spherion
Itasca, Ill.
What Would You Do If You Ran Microsoft?
[Ed. note: The following letters are answers to the question
above. They are taken, with permission, from responses to a survey
to be published in our next issue.]
Reverse the erroneous perception that computer technology is cheap
and support is free. People will think nothing today of spending
$800 for a set of tires, but will balk at spending that on a piece
of software or hardware that their livelihood depends on. The bottom
line should be not how little I spend on IT, but how reliable, secure
and how high the ROI is on IT. Often I see clients skimp on things
and I tell them, "So, you've decided to go out of business?" It's
a joke, but it gets their attention. Microsoft has made this technology
much more affordable. But it will never be cheap.
K. Curtis Brown
Architect, Unisys
New Haven, Conn.
I would greatly simplify the licensing, and create a more useful
Core CAL [client access license] including Exchange, SQL Server,
Terminal Services, Windows file and print. I would also include
SQL licensing for products that depend on it indirectly. Too many
products seem cheap, until you add SQL licensing on top of everything
else.
David Figueroa
Lead Tech - Access Infrastructure, MTM Technologies Inc.
Houston, Texas