One way to keep track of who is making a bid for Microsoft partners' attention is to watch who sponsors the annual Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, which opens its expo today.
The biggest surprise of the 2011 conference in Los Angeles is Dell, which has always sent employees to WPC, but has never been a sponsor -- despite making a major channel push in December 2007 with the launch of the PartnerDirect program, which dovetails with the Microsoft Partner Network. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 11, 20111 comments
Scott it reporting live from this week's Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles -- follow him at @scottbekker. Here are some of his highlights from Monday's opening keynote. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 11, 20110 comments
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer confessed to being very afraid at the last Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, when the company declared itself "all in" on the cloud.
"Last year's WPC was, for me, scary," Ballmer explained Monday morning during his keynote opening the 2011 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, which runs through Thursday. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 11, 20110 comments
Things aren't as interconnected as Gartner feared.
To mark the start of the second half of 2011, the Stamford, Conn.-based IT analyst firm updated its 2011 IT spending forecast yesterday. Rather than slowing down since the Great East Japan Earthquake in March, IT spending is poised for an even stronger growth year in 2011 than it appeared to be when Gartner issued a start-of-the-year forecast on Jan. 6. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 01, 20110 comments
- Keep updated with the latest WPC news at RCP's WPC 2011 page here.
Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference Web site is an early adopter of a new LinkedIn feature for surfacing LinkedIn Groups content on Web sites and in applications.
Microsoft announced the feature for its digitalwpc site Thursday morning at the same time that LinkedIn unveiled the new LinkedIn Groups API. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 30, 20110 comments
- Keep updated with the latest WPC news at RCP's WPC 2011 page here.
In a Twitter chat Thursday, Microsoft channel executives offered a few previews of the 2011 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, which takes place in Los Angeles in a little over a week.
There was nothing earth-shattering, but Microsoft corporate vice president for the Worldwide Partner Group, Jon Roskill, gave a few clues about things to expect: More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 30, 20110 comments
- Keep updated with the latest WPC news at RCP's WPC 2011 page here.
The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles is shaping up to be a huge gathering.
According to Microsoft's @WPCLA Twitter feed, attendee registrations passed 14,000 on Tuesday, and 11 days remain for getting passes to the mid-July event. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 29, 20110 comments
On Monday we pulled together a list of 25 things partners should know about Office 365. We'd actually intended to do 28 things, but couldn't get confirmation from Microsoft on three of them. Now that the general availability is official, we got a confirmation of sorts, so the piece has been updated to 28. If you haven't read through it already, here's the new stuff: More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 29, 20110 comments
In the time-honored tech tradition of raining on a competitor's parade, the Google Apps team attacked Office 365 in a blog post the day before Microsoft launched its cloud offering.
The post, "365 reasons to consider Google Apps," went up on the Official Google Enterprise Blog on Monday. The post, written by Shan Sinha, Google Apps product manager, actually boiled down to four arguments: More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 29, 20110 comments
Several Microsoft partners are racking up the silver competencies in the Microsoft Partner Network of late.
The Pinnacle Corp., a Microsoft Certified Partner and Small Business Specialist based in Arlington, Texas, this week announced its achievement of five silver competencies. The competencies are ISV, Data Platform, ERP, Hosting and Midmarket Solution Provider. Pinnacle is a supplier of automation technology to the convenience store and petroleum industries and has been a Microsoft Certified Partner since 2005. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 28, 20113 comments
Microsoft, the stock, did relatively well in the trading sessions surrounding the launch of Office 365.
MSFT had a strong session on Monday as investors anticipated the Office 365 launch and digested a report that Windows 8 might come sooner than expected. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 28, 20110 comments
- Keep updated with the latest WPC news at RCP's WPC 2011 page here.
Microsoft's global channel chief Jon Roskill will participate in a Twitter chat on Thursday morning about the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.
Roskill, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group, joins the regular series of Twitter chats that Microsoft has been holding in advance of WPC, which takes place this year in Los Angeles the week of July 11. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 28, 20110 comments