Dun & Bradstreet Inc. is taking its services to the channel and wants Microsoft partners to spearhead the effort.
Also known as D&B, the 171-year-old firm is a purveyor of an earlier type of business intelligence -- keeping carefully curated files on companies that could help D&B customers with credit decisions and business-to-business marketing.
This month, it launched the D&B AllianceNetwork, an indirect sales program that includes marketing, sales and training resources for partners. D&B specifically calls out Microsoft Partner Network members as its preferred channel partners. Completing the fit is the company's D&B360 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which packs D&B data into Microsoft Dynamics CRM implementations.
The metrics D&B provides on the data that can be integrated into Dynamics CRM, either online or on-premise, are impressive: records on 210 million companies and 100 million contacts, as well as 900 industry research reports and 3 million "corporate family trees."
In a statement, Jim Lawton, senior vice president of strategic alliances at D&B, argues the AllianceNetwork will help Microsoft partners understand their own customers better and build solutions that make those customers more effective with their own customers. "Microsoft's network partners can now present a fully integrated solution that includes robust D&B insight, providing a complete data-rich solution for their client base," he said.
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 05, 20121 comments
As the iPad's corporate momentum encourages more solution providers to consider partnering with Apple, one of Microsoft's top U.S. partners recently publicized its deepening ties with Cupertino.
Capax Global, a Microsoft National Systems Integrator partner based in Parsippany, N.J., late last month promoted the validation of its mobile device management practice through its achievement of the Apple Mobility Technical Competency.
The competency is a credential within the Apple Consultants Network. The competency has a very straightforward path for Microsoft partners, according to documentation on the Apple Web site. Microsoft Certified Technology Specialists who have passed exams for Exchange Server 2010 configuration and any of several exams covering Windows Server 2008, Active Directory or Windows Small Business Server 2008/2011 are eligible to be designated as the Certified Consultant of record for their company. To finalize the certification, the consultant must take some free technical training on the iPhone and iPad and complete a $400, two-day implementation workshop.
The Capax public endorsement of Apple mobility comes less than a month before Microsoft is set to release Windows 8, which Microsoft clearly hopes will challenge the iPad in the enterprise.
Like many of the 30-plus Microsoft NSIs, Capax plays the vendor field, although the company chooses a relatively small number of strategic partners. Capax's major alliances are with Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services, Autonomy and Apple.
Still, Capax's announcement clearly lays out how critical it is for even committed Microsoft partners to have solid Apple credentials if they want to compete in the corporate Bring Your Own Device market. Most striking are three facts the firm lists: that Apple is expected to sell 53 million iPads this year, that iPads are outselling any individual PC manufacturer's entire PC lineup, and that "nearly all" Fortune 500 companies are testing or deploying iPads.
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 05, 20120 comments
The conventional wisdom is that Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama in the first presidential debate, but there was another winner in terms of attention Wednesday night: America's small businesses.
"Small business," a term that describes most Microsoft partner companies and many of their customers, appeared 27 times in this transcript of the debate and featured prominently in both candidates' opening statements.
Obama, who went first, said, "I think it's important...that we change our tax code to make sure that we're helping small businesses." In his turn, Romney named "champion small business" as the fifth element of a five-part economic plan. The Republican nominee elaborated, "It's small business that creates the jobs in America. And over the last four years small-business people have decided that America may not be the place to open a new business, because new business startups are down to a 30-year low. I know what it takes to get small business growing again, to hire people."
Amid their general agreement that small businesses are an important engine of economic growth, the candidates drew clear distinctions between themselves.
Pointing to his administration's record, Obama said, "I also lowered taxes for small businesses 18 times." (The claim was unpacked earlier this week in The New York Times, which reported that the number includes expired provisions and incentives that require businesses to spend money on specific things like health care or equipment.) While Obama said he wanted to continue existing tax rates, he acknowledged that his regular campaign pledge to raise taxes on incomes above $250,000 would affect 3 percent of small businesses.
"Under my plan, 97 percent of small businesses would not see their income taxes go up," the president and Democratic nominee said.
That was the dividing line with Romney, who argued that the top 3 percent of small businesses were extremely important.
"Those businesses that are in the last 3 percent of businesses happen to employ half -- half -- of all of the people who work in small business. Those are the businesses that employ one-quarter of all the workers in America. And your plan is take their tax rate from 35 percent to 40 percent," Romney said.
Romney cited a statistic from the National Federation of Independent Business, a small-business advocacy group, that the tax hike would cost 700,000 jobs. (Romney is apparently referring to a report prepared by Ernst & Young on behalf of NFIB and other organizations. It says the job losses occur over an unspecified "long-term" and the analysis also takes into account other possible changes to the tax code.) "I don't want to kill jobs in this environment," Romney said.
Instead, the former Massachusetts governor said he wants to bring down rates across the board, while lowering deductions, exemptions and credits.
"The reason is because small business pays that individual rate," Romney said. "If we lower that rate, they will be able to hire more people. For me, this is about jobs."
The term "small business" got pulled into several other parts of the debate, with the candidates sparring over the effect of health care cost increases on small-business hiring, the cost to small businesses of Obama's Affordable Care Act, the fairness of billion-dollar tax breaks for bigger businesses and whether or not some of Donald Trump's many businesses would qualify as "small."
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 05, 20120 comments
Datto Inc. continued its march to integrate its backup solutions with major managed service provider offerings with the announcement on Thursday of product integration with Kaseya.
Datto's hardware-based on-site and off-site backup, disaster recovery and business continuity solutions now work tightly with Kaseya's remote monitoring and management software.
Ian McChord, Datto product manager, called the integration "another milestone in Datto's aggressive integration plan." Some of the company's other MSP-related integrations include professional services automation software from Autotask and Connectwise.
According to Datto, features of the Kaseya-Datto integration include central monitoring and management of an MSP's entire fleet of Datto devices from within the Kaseya portal, and automatic creation within the Kaseya portal of device and agent alerts after a one-time setup in the Datto Partner Portal.
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 04, 20120 comments
There may be a bigger opportunity for partners in helping their customers protect their Apple iPhones and iPads than anyone realized.
Sure, many of us have heard that MSPs and other partners can help customers lock down their Apple devices. But assisting customers in configuring their devices using Apple's cloud to have them ready to lock, wipe or locate devices that are swiped by criminals seemed like something of a niche.
It turns out that stealing Apple-related stuff is a growth industry, at least for criminals in New York City. In a speech Tuesday, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly blamed a 40 percent jump in the theft of Apple products for a recent jump in the overall crime rate.
"Overall crime is up 4 percent. In the absence of the Apple thefts, we would be experiencing a decline," Kelly wrote in the speech, according to a report on NBC News.com (formerly MSNBC.com). According to Kelly, there were 11,447 thefts of Apple products so far in 2012.
Kelly is encouraging users to turn on the tracking and automatic shut-off technologies, and the NYPD will be putting more undercover officers on patrol in subways.
Last year, we wrote about a Microsoft partner who helped a customer with a similar situation -- an iPad stolen from his hands while waiting for a Boston train. In that case, the partner got on the phone with authorities, helped guide them to the stolen device and made an alarm go off on the iPad, causing the perpetrator to pull it out of his backpack and allowing officers to identify the person.
I'm not sure what the situation is in Boston now, but I can say that on a recent trip to New York I was struck by how ubiquitous the iPhone seemed to have become there. For partners whose customers have iPhones and iPads (read: nearly all partners) this NYPD statistic could be the start of an important conversation that protects the customer and gets the partner some well-earned services revenue.
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 03, 20121 comments
Tell me you haven't wanted to do this if you've ever worked with servers?
The clip is part of a Symantec campaign to highlight the resilience of its disaster recovery and high-availability solutions. (An 11-minute, in-depth video is here.) But mostly it's just fun to watch. Thanks to Symantec for a break in the day.
Posted by Scott Bekker on October 02, 20120 comments
For the last few years, IBM has been quietly working with managed service providers to offer their MSP solutions on IBM services, software and hardware. On Wednesday, Big Blue made it official.
"I think in many ways, this announcement is about pulling it all together -- creating a public program and saying to MSPs that these are the paths you can be on in terms of investing with IBM, and these are what the benefits are," said Mike McClurg, vice president of IBM Global and Midmarket Sales and Strategy.
At joint events in Waltham, Mass. and Stuttgart, Germany on Wednesday, IBM unveiled global initiatives to enable IBM partner MSPs to deliver technology solutions or services to clients on a pay-as-you-go model. "In essence, it's a full-range MSP program within PartnerWorld," McClurg said in a telephone interview.
Elements of the program include:
- Four Global Centers of Excellence where MSPs can work with IBM experts to develop cloud services and solutions. The centers are located in Shanghai; Tokyo; Ehningen, Germany; and New York City.
- Marketing and sales support to help brand and promote partner services. While IBM didn't discuss the exact amount of investment on the MSP side, a company statement put the figure at a "significant part of the $100 million IBM has invested annually." One interesting piece of the marketing support is a social media bootcamp, in which IBM team members sit down with partners to help them manage their brand, generate interest and optimize search results.
- By product, the focus is on IBM's PureSystems platform and SmartCloud, either in IBM's datacenters or at the partner's own datacenter using SmartCloud Enterprise.
- Financing will also be offered to MSPs building out IBM-based datacenters through IBM Global Financing. Options include zero percent interest loans for 12 months for IBM systems, storage and software. IBM will also allow a 90-day first payment deferment for MSPs that select the PureSystems platform. McClurg noted that MSPs whose potential end users previously invested in IBM-based systems that would be unnecessary under the MSP solution can trade in systems for credits based on the IBM Certified Pre-Owned program.
Already at the formal launch, IBM has 1,400 MSP partners, including Perimeter, Symmetry, Velocity, CenterBeam, Oxford Networks, PEER 1 Hosting and Connectria. McClurg says the spending trends and buying preferences among customers mean there's a lot of opportunity for MSPs, VARs, ISVs and systems integrators to join across all verticals and most customer sizes from within IBM's 14,000 partner network and outside that network.
"We certainly have a long way to go in terms of tapping the entire market, but we do see this as [becoming] a major part of PartnerWorld," he said.
Posted by Scott Bekker on September 26, 20120 comments
The prices for the Microsoft Surface devices may range from $300 to $800, according to a big hint from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in a newspaper interview.
Asked in a Q&A with the Seattle Times about Surface pricing, Ballmer first replied that Microsoft hasn't announced pricing. But after describing how devices cheaper than the Apple iPad tend toward the chintzy, Ballmer said, "If you look at the bulk of the PC market, it would run between, say, probably $300 to about $700 or $800. That's the sweet spot."
While not a definitive pricing announcement, the CEO's comments published over the weekend shed light on the ballpark Microsoft is looking at for the two Surface devices the company will sell to accompany Windows 8. The Microsoft Surface RT, presumably toward the $300 pricing end, is a consumer-focused device to run Windows RT. That device is expected to ship at the launch of the operating system near the end of October.
The Microsoft Surface Pro, which would probably be in the $700-$800 range of Ballmer's estimate, will run Windows 8 Pro and be available 90 days after general availability of Windows 8.
The Surface is already giving Microsoft's OEM partners something to think about as far as the future of their relationship with Redmond. In the Q&A, Ballmer gave them even more to ponder. Asked where he saw Microsoft in five to 10 years, Ballmer said:
"First of all, I'd say: pre-eminent technology company. I think that in a back-looking view, people would say we were a software company. That's kind of how we were born. I think when you look forward, our core capability will be software, (but) you'll probably think of us more as a devices-and-services company."
In his next breath, Ballmer cautioned that he didn't mean Microsoft would build every device. "We'll have partners who make devices with our software in it and our services built in," he said.
The full interview is here.
See Also:
Posted by Scott Bekker on September 18, 20121 comments
A Windows server launch is always a date for partners to circle on their calendars. The launch this month of Windows Server 2012 was no exception. Billing the new server as a "cloud OS,"Microsoft did a lot of work in this release to integrate Windows Server 2012 with the forthcoming System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 and with Windows Azure to address the changing needs of the IT world.
To emphasize the importance of the product to partners, Microsoft's top channel executive, Jon Roskill, blogged earlier this month about high-level opportunities surrounding Windows Server 2012. He called out:
1. Datacenter Practice
Roskill's top opportunity involved deeper datacenter practice opportunities.
"With advanced capabilities like storage optimization, high availability, simplified backups and secure multi-tenancy, Windows Server 2012 enables you to deliver bigger, more complete solutions that go beyond virtualization," Roskill wrote. "Since these rich capabilities are built in, there are no additional licensing fees for customers -- freeing up budget for customers to spend on your services and solutions."
2. Consumerization of IT
The BYOD technologies and some new virtual desktop infrastructure capabilities present opportunities for partners to help with the customer challenges around device management, Roskill said.
3. Cloud Computing
A recurring Microsoft theme in the cloud battles is customer choice -- between on-premise and cloud. Microsoft is hoping partners will hit that theme hard with the cloud OS enabled by the Windows Server-Azure-System Center combination. "From elastic, cloud optimized applications to cross-premises identity management to services like automation and disaster recovery, your opportunities with the Cloud OS are quite broad," Roskill noted.
4. SMB Servers
The biggest partner controversy of the Windows Server 2012 is the decision not to build a new version of Windows Small Business Server on its code base. In fact, Microsoft doesn't plan to create any new versions of SBS. Roskill skirted the SBS end-of-life controversy by pointing to the remaining opportunity. He mentioned that more than 1 million customers are running SBS 2003 or earlier versions and will need to upgrade before SBS 2003 support ends in 2015. While the implication is that those customers should move to Windows Server 2012 Essentials, there's also a large SBS 2011 opportunity in that user base. Roskill also pointed to the "first-server market," Microsoft's designation for multi-PC customers with no server installed.
5. Upgrade on Current Hardware
For customers not ready to make the jump to new hardware, a lot of current hardware can handle Windows Server 2012. "With WS 2012 and Hyper-V you can do most SMB virtualization scenarios on many customers' current servers," Roskill said.
Check out the upcoming October issue of Redmond Channel Partner magazine for a lot more on what partners need to know about Windows Server 2012.
Posted by Scott Bekker on September 17, 20120 comments
In all the years that I've set up new PCs either in my own house or for relatives, I've never run across a piece of start-up freeware from an OEM that was worth keeping.
It has always been my mission to hunt down any bit of how-to, security dashboarding, system updating or other start-up junk and delete it. In the rare cases that I didn't (or couldn't), I always regretted it. The usually poorly written and poorly thought out junkware would either accost me with non-actionable pop-up windows or slowed system performance.
However, it appears that Samsung has done something rare, possibly even unique: It's come up with a piece of OEM freeware that might actually be useful. The South Korean company announced three new all-in-one PCs for Windows 8 yesterday that aim to undo one of the most unpopular design decisions of Windows 8.
I'm referring, of course, to Microsoft's insistence on getting rid of the Start button in the re-imagined Windows 8. The eagle eyes over at Mashable noticed that Samsung inserted the S Launcher, a widget that acts like the familiar Start button.
Check out the Mashable blog entry for some screen shots.
Posted by Scott Bekker on August 29, 20121 comments
A new "Cloud Easy" partner subsidy similar to the recurring Big Easy incentive is now available for Microsoft partners in the United States.
Cindy Bates, vice president for U.S. Small and Midsized Business and Distribution at Microsoft, announced Cloud Easy in July at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.
The Cloud Easy program consists of a 15 percent subsidy check, sent by Microsoft to the customer and made out to the partner of the customer's choice. Customers can use the checks for partner services or software.
Intended primarily for small-business customers in the United States, the products that trigger the subsidies include Office 365, Dynamics CRM Online and Windows Intune. Subsidies cover customer orders in the range of 5-200 seats made between July 1 and Sept. 30, although the program could be extended.
In an e-mail statement announcing availability of Cloud Easy Wednesday, a Microsoft spokesperson noted, "This is the only new partner incentives offer for Office 365 currently running in the U.S."
One of the most frequently cited benefits of the similar Big Easy incentive was a multiplier effect that occurred on the subsidy checks. With their Microsoft checks in hand, customers would often invest in solutions worth many times the subsidy amount.
While this incentive is less generous than a 50 percent subsidy Microsoft was handing out for Business Productivity Online Suite sales last year in the dead period just before the Office 365 launch, it scales much higher. That program cut off at 25 seats, while Cloud Easy's seat limit is eight times higher.
Details on Cloud Easy are available here.
Posted by Scott Bekker on August 29, 20120 comments
Samsung's first Windows Phone 8 device will have a gigantic 4.8-inch screen and a MicroSD storage expansion slot.
"This is just the first in a big lineup of new hardware that's coming with Windows Phone 8," Microsoft's Ben Rudolph wrote on the Windows Phone Blog about the Samsung ATIV S.
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| The Samsung ATIV S. Source: Microsoft |
The South Korean phonemaker, hard hit on Aug. 24 when a jury found Samsung had infringed six of Apple's patents, announced the new Windows Phone device on Wednesday at IFA in Berlin. The Apple case primarily involved Samsung's phones running the Google Android OS, and the court case is widely viewed as yet another opportunity for Windows Phone to start to gain some market share.
In a loving description of the ATIV S, Rudolph detailed some of the features:
- Super AMOLED display with Corning Gorilla Glass 2
- 8.7mm-thick brushed aluminum chassis
- 1.5 GHz dual-core processor
- 1 GB of onboard RAM
- A choice of storage -- either 16 GB or 32 GB (both models have MicroSD expansion slots)
- A 2300mAh battery
- 8MP autofocus rear camera and 1.9MP front-facing camera
Microsoft's closest partner for Windows Phone, Nokia, is expected to announce its Windows Phone 8 lineup next week at an event in New York.
Posted by Scott Bekker on August 29, 20124 comments