In an effort to get more of its best advocates to become walking advertisements for Windows Phones, Microsoft is instituting a discount program for partners.
Windows Phone Division President Andy Lees announced the Windows Phone Discount Program for Partners last week at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles, where many partners were already walking around with Windows Phone 7 devices. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 21, 20110 comments
A Japanese newspaper is reporting that one of the Windows Phone "Mango" devices on display at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference last week may go on sale as early as late August.
That would put the phone out ahead of the fall release schedule that Microsoft officials have offered for the Mango, aka 7.5, update to Windows Phone 7. As if beating a ship date target wouldn't be jolting enough, the phone is also waterproof and, apparently, pink.
More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 20, 20110 comments
Apple released its quarterly earnings Tuesday night, and the company continues to sell consumer devices at a crazy clip.
For the product numbers that everyone cares about: The company sold 20.34 million iPhones in the quarter ended June 25, and sold 9.25 million iPads over the same period. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 20, 20110 comments
Zenith Infotech is expanding the types of services it makes available to its managed services provider (MSP) customers with a new program called NOC Service Miles.
"The Service Miles program is similar to what a rewards program would be for a credit card or an airline," says Jason Jacobetz, director of sales at Zenith, a Pittsburgh area-based provider of services for remote monitoring and management (RMM), backup and disaster recovery, and virtual helpdesk. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 20, 20110 comments
There was a session at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference last week on "Upselling and Cross Selling Windows Intune and Office 365." While I found time to write about the tweaks in billing on Office 365, the increase in the Internal Use Rights available to partners for Intune, and about the beta of the next rev of Intune, I missed this session (along with several hundred other great-sounding WPC sessions).
Looks like this was an interesting one. Steve Deming of Microsoft's TS2 team blogged about it late last week, especially the roundtable segment when partners talked about how they're selling the products. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 20, 20110 comments
Microsoft is throttling back on the absolute number of National Systems Integrators (NSIs), but the elite group of U.S.-based, high-growth partners continues to have an outsized effect on Microsoft ecosystem revenues.
To qualify as an NSI in 2010, U.S.-based systems integrators generally needed to meet revenue bars and pipeline bars reportedly in the seven- to eight-figure range, have more than 50 Microsoft-focused employees, and meet a "law of threes" -- engaging in three or more locations, customer size segments or vertical markets (read "Microsoft Partners, Meet the NSIs"). Benefits included a national Business Development Management or NSI Partner Account Manager, special market development funds and other advantages that come from being top-of-mind for the Microsoft field. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 18, 20110 comments
Quest Software, a multiple winner of the Microsoft Global ISV Partner of the Year award, is rolling out a unified worldwide partner program for its community of 4,500 reseller, referral and distribution partners.
The Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based company announced the new Quest Partner Circle program during the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles last week. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 18, 20110 comments
Microsoft will merge two of the new Microsoft Partner Network competencies -- virtualization and System Center -- into one in the next few months.
"Just as System Center and Hyper-V have integrated and grown together, partners have told us there's an opportunity for us to streamline the competencies in this area," said Jon Roskill, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group, at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference last week. "We're [merging] the systems management and virtualization competency into one." More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 18, 20110 comments
Microsoft is putting some new partner incentives behind Microsoft Lync to try to capitalize on the buzz surrounding its unified communications solution set.
"We're going to increase the incentives for partners that lead with Lync as their communications solution, whether on-premises or in the cloud," said Microsoft's top channel executive, Jon Roskill, in a keynote this week at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. "This brings the power of our solution incentive program to Microsoft's next billion-dollar business." More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 15, 20110 comments
Microsoft is tweaking the way partners will be paid advisor fees when they get customers signed up for public cloud services like Office 365 and Windows InTune.
A change announced this week at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles tips payments in partners' favor. But the change doesn't address many partners' fundamental complaint that Microsoft won't let partners bill their customers themselves. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 15, 20113 comments
An annual focus of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference is partner-to-partner activity.
The 2011 WPC in Los Angeles, with its 12,000 reported partner attendees, presented exceptionally strong opportunities for P2P activity. Microsoft officials said attendees had scheduled 25,000 P2P meetings and counting during WPC and reiterated a previously disclosed estimate of $10.1 billion in P2P activity among Microsoft partners in 2010. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 15, 20110 comments
The literal centerpiece of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference last year in Washington, D.C. was the Azure Platform Appliance. The tractor-trailer-sized prototype dominated the 2010 WPC show floor.
A year later, the Azure Appliance played a strictly backstage role at the 2011 WPC in Los Angeles this week. While the Appliance was absent, however, at least it was mentioned. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 14, 20110 comments