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.
Dell has a large booth close to the entrance of the Expo hall, and the company's Twitter feed has been promising that attendees will find out about laptops, mobility, servers and storage.
As one of nine Gold sponsors of WPC, Dell is in the second tier of major sponsors. The three top-tier sponsors at the Platinum level are HP, Fujitsu and Parallels.
With the huge overlap of their partner programs, HP is regularly a major sponsor of WPC. Parallels, which specializes in hosting and cloud services enablement, has played a big role in previous WPCs. The company named former Microsoft executive Birger Steen as its CEO in February and is becoming an increasingly important strategic partner to Microsoft as Redmond floats deeper into cloud services.
Fujitsu was one of Microsoft's Azure Appliance launch partners at the 2010 conference, and as a major global reseller of servers, desktops, storage and mobile computing solutions, the company is surely interested in reaching the approximately 10,000 Microsoft partner decision makers in attendance who hail from outside the United States.
The other eight Gold sponsors are AppSense Inc., Citrix Systems Inc., GWAVA Technologies, Laserfiche, LifeSize Communications, SITECORE, Symantec Corp. and Telerik.
The Silver tier includes AltiGen, CA Technologies, Infocomm Singapore, Polycom, Quest Software, Rise and Wyse Technology Inc.
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.
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.
He described the year-by-year process of telegraphing to Microsoft's community of roughly 640,000 partners how the company was approaching first Software as a Service and later cloud computing, as the industry and Microsoft's strategy evolved.
He said five years ago, Microsoft "mentioned" the cloud, four years ago the company talked about the transition, three years ago it provided some detail and two years ago it provided a little more detail. But in 2010, Microsoft executives said constantly that Microsoft was going "all in" on the cloud.
Ballmer effectively admitted that he had worried that he'd be standing at the front of a cloud parade that partners wouldn't line up behind.
Microsoft's top executive told attendees at the L.A. Staples Center that he was "relieved" that partners came with him, pointing to the record attendance of 15,000 people at WPC as evidence of partners' interest in and support of Microsoft's cloud strategy.
He made the comment while stating emphatically that he appreciated that partners are "independent business people who are coming to work every day cheering for us but also" considering alternatives. "So, you're always pushing us, pushing us, pushing us," said Ballmer, pointing out that it's a role that only partners play -- customers aren't as invested in Microsoft and employees don't have the psychological distance.
For partners that commit to Office 365, Ballmer vowed that Microsoft could beat Google and any other cloud competitor. He made the claim that every deal that Microsoft engages in with the Business Productivity Online Suite/Office 365, the company wins.
But most of his cloud emphasis on Monday was around the cloud infrastructure solutions, such as the Azure platform and the private cloud.
Reviewing the last 12 months since WPC 2010, Ballmer said, "A couple of big things have happened," then he went on to list Windows Server's 75 percent market share for new servers and SQL Server's 40 percent market share for new databases.
In the rest of the speech, Ballmer and other executives made some small-bore announcements, including the availability of a public beta of Windows InTune 2.0, a promise that more would be revealed about Windows 8 at the Build show in September, the holiday availability of voice command and Bing integration with Xbox and that Windows Phone 7 had reached the milestone of 20,000 apps.
However, it was on the topic of Windows Phone that Ballmer got his biggest audience reaction. "Phone: We've gone from very small to very small, but it's been a heck of a year," Ballmer joked to big laughs.
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.
"It is a bit surprising that we have not seen a more significant impact on our global IT spending forecast as a result of the Japan earthquake and tsunami, but despite widespread concerns about disruptions to the supply of critical components in the initial aftermath of the natural disaster, there has not been a dramatic impact on overall IT spending," said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner, in a statement.
Gartner's new worldwide IT spending forecast for all of 2011 is 7.1 percent growth to $3.67 billion. That's up from the 5.6 percent growth the market research firm expected back in January.
For the channel, the outlook appears slightly better for the services component of IT spending than it did at the start of the year, as well. Gartner lifted its services growth forecast by two percentage points to 6.6 percent. The strongest growth is expected in computing hardware (11.7 percent) and enterprise software (9.5 percent).
In the news release announcing the IT spending forecast in January, Gartner didn't mention public cloud services. But the June 30 update calls for 20 percent growth in worldwide public cloud services spending to $89 billion in 2011 from $74 billion last year. By 2015, Gartner forecasts public cloud services will total $177 billion.
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.
"We are glad to be the first B2B brand taking advantage of LinkedIn in a new way," wrote Jon Roskill, corporate vice president for the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group, during a WPC Twitter Chat Thursday morning. "The LinkedIn group API brings the group into the event site so after #WPC11 we can keep networking."
With the new functionality, visible here, Microsoft has created a "Social" page on the digitalwpc portal for the 2011 Worldwide Partner Conference that pulls LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and blog information into one view.
"The great thing about this API is you won't be hopping back and forth -- it's all done in the context of the hub of the WPC," said Julie Bennani, general manager of the Microsoft Partner Network, in an interview this week.
Bennani said putting the three social networking tools together is in line with Microsoft's strategy of going where its partners are. "There are 430,000 Microsoft partner organizations worldwide. It slows everything down if we try to be in the middle of all that."
According to a Microsoft survey of partners, 53 percent use LinkedIn.
Microsoft is finding that each of the three social networks represented on its WPC social page is playing an important role for partners. "Facebook is definitely looking very social -- personal, friends, contacts, et cetera," Bennani said. Partners are using that section to talk about WPC parties and get-togethers around the Los Angeles conference, which starts in a little over a week.
"Twitter is becoming an in-the-moment information platform. Partners are using LinkedIn as another place to do partner-to-partner connections," she said.
In a blog post announcing the LinkedIn Groups API Thursday, the social networking site highlighted the Microsoft implementation.
"As an example of what developers can do with the Groups API, we are excited to have Microsoft debut the first large-scale implementation of the Groups API on their Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference event website," wrote Madhu Gupta in the blog post.
According to Gupta's post, the Groups API will enable applications to get group discussions by popularity and recency, get My Group memberships and get suggested groups. The API will also allow for joining a Group; posting new discussions; establishing connections with other professionals; and commenting, liking and following discussions.
Adam Nash, vice president of product at LinkedIn, said the Groups API is part of a larger strategy, which also includes recently launched plug-ins, to make LinkedIn the "professional operating system for the Web."
"You get a very different quality of discussion when people's professional identities are tied to what they're saying," Nash said in an interview Wednesday. "When you see that the person saying this is not just some username but the CIO at Charles Schwab, that matters."
Creating the Groups API is part of LinkedIn's goal of spreading those professionally sourced, LinkedIn-enabled discussions throughout the Web, in internal corporate applications, into community tools and onto mobile apps. Do you think the LinkedIn Groups API could create new ways for you to do business or communicate with customers and partners? Let me know at [email protected] or leave a comment below.
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:
- There should be a lot of activity around Azure, Microsoft's cloud infrastructure platform that has been heavily advertised across the Web lately. Roskill wrote that there will be discussions of vertical opportunities in Azure and said "there will be awesome Partner Azure apps."
- A Cloud Accelerate Push. Cloud Accelerate is a Microsoft on-ramp program for helping partners sell more Microsoft cloud services such as Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online. Roskill wrote that Microsoft Partner Account Managers will be evaluated on their partners' progress within Cloud Accelerate during Microsoft's FY12, which starts Friday. Cloud Accelerate Partners will also be important "on the all important Subsidiary Scorecard," he wrote.
- Program stability. "Big improvements to MPN in the last year, next year is about stability and building on the great competency foundation," Roskill wrote. (Check out my cover story interview with Roskill in the July issue of Redmond Channel Partner magazine for more on the Microsoft Partner Network transition and for Roskill's take on his first year running Microsoft's global channel.)
- Windows Phone 7 and Mango. "Definitely expect great mobility demo and news and Nokia will be in our Partner Expo along with hundreds more," Roskill Tweeted.
A major push for the show, as usual, will be driving connections among partners via lunches, parties and one-on-one meetings, noted Roskill, adding, "WPC11 will still be about Partner success but we want to focus on mapping technology to business outcomes for Partners."
In another Tweet on Thursday, Ross Brown, vice president of worldwide partner strategy in the Microsoft WPG, wrote, "Come to LA in July and hear how leading with Microsoft will be your most profitable move you can make."
For more on what to expect at WPC, check out the RCP WPC 2011 page and our breakdown of the keynote lineup.
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.
Microsoft's high hopes for attendance in 2011 appear on track to be realized. Before registration opened, the company projected the audience for the international show at 13,000 partners and 2,000 press, industry analysts and Microsoft employees.
Last year at the show in Washington, D.C., Microsoft reported about 14,000 attendees, including 9,300 partners. The previous year, in the recession-pounded 2009 when several other vendors cancelled their partner confabs, Microsoft had about 5,500 partners and 7,700 total attendees.
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:
20. Non-LAR Partners Can Make Direct Money on Office Licenses
No one disputes that the Microsoft Office suite is a huge opportunity for partners. But when it comes to making money off the actual license sales, that's always been the territory of large account resellers and distributors. Solution provider partners had to make their money on consulting, integration and other add-on services around that licensing revenue. The Partner of Record fees on Office 365 E3 and E4 subscriptions potentially start bringing some Office licensing revenues directly into solution providers' pockets on a regular basis, as opposed to through short-time promotions.
We should note that this entry and the next two are extrapolated from previous Microsoft public statements. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to confirm these conclusions by noting that Microsoft doesn't provide that level of detail publicly.
"There are no changes to the partner compensation model. Office 365 creates new growth opportunities for partners to reach more customers, deliver more complete services including Office, and unlock new business," the spokesperson said.
21. The Max Per User Per Seat Revenue Nearly Triples
With BPOS, the maximum revenue a partner could earn from a seat per month was $1.80. That's the $10 customer cost with the 12 percent net new seat fee and the 6 percent renewal fee for the first year. With Office 365, the top SKU, which includes Office Professional Plus and Lync Voice, comes in at $27 per user per month. The corresponding partner fee per user per month would be $4.86.
22. Average Revenues Will Probably Be More of a Wash
For many deals, the $1.80 in fees that partners could get in fees per user per month in the first year (see No. 21 for details) probably won't change much. For customers that do the straight upgrade to the Office 365 E1 SKU, the price is the same. E2, which includes Office Web Apps, costs $16 per user per month, which would bring partners $2.88 a seat each month in the first year. When Microsoft talks about how Office 365 extends the opportunity into small businesses, though, that's a smaller revenue opportunity, and not just for the number of seats per engagement. At just $6 per user per month, it's going to be attractive to customers, but good only for $1.08 per user per month for partners.
Related:
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:
- "Office 365 is for individuals. Apps is for teams."
- "Office 365 is built for Microsoft. Apps is built for choice."
- "Office 365 is 11 different plans, three editions and two tiers. Apps is $5/month with no commitment."
- "Office 365 is about the desktop. Apps is about the web."
For the remaining 361 reasons, Google has put out a couple of Twitter requests for ammunition from its partner and customer community and the suggestions have been rolling in. In the meantime, the blog entry has a comparison chart of Google Apps against the five main flavors of Office 365 that's actually pretty useful.
Google's main points aren't unfair, but they seem aimed at portraying the strengths of the Microsoft offering -- its flexibility, its acknowledgement of users' online/offline reality and its integration with the dominant installed desktop productivity suite -- as weaknesses.
More than 24 hours later, still no response from Microsoft's competitive bulldogs over at the Why Microsoft blog. Maybe they're comfortable letting Office 365 speak for itself?
Related:
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.
Earlier in the month, POD Inc., of Albuquerque, N.M., announced that it had earned eight silver competencies. POD, which offers computer network support and cloud computing services, earned the competencies in Data Platform, Portals and Collaboration, Project and Portfolio Management, Server Platform, Desktop Platform, Midmarket Solution Provider, Software Development and Web Development.
They join companies that have recently highlighted their achievement of a mix of gold and silver competencies. Altico Advisors in Marlborough, Mass., earned a gold competency in ERP and a silver competency in CRM in early June. And in May, ePlus Inc., a Herndon, Va.-based Microsoft National Systems Integrator announced the achievement of three gold competencies (Portals and Collaboration, Unified Communications and Virtualization) and seven silver competencies (Application Integration, Business Intelligence, Data Platform, Midmarket Solution Provider, OEM Hardware, Server Platform and Web Development).
When Microsoft restructured the Microsoft Partner Program into the Microsoft Partner Network, Microsoft channel executives intended for there to be fewer partners able to call themselves gold. But the company appears to be struggling to persuade former Microsoft Gold Certified Partners and Microsoft Certified Partners that won't be achieving gold competencies to put in the effort to earn silver competencies, which in many ways are harder to achieve than the old Microsoft Gold Certified level.
Microsoft Partner Network General Manager Julie Bennani recently blogged about the value of silver in an effort to spur partners to silver. Jon Roskill, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group, will speak about the Value of the MPN at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference next month, and part of the speech is sure to focus on the value of silver.
More evidence of Microsoft's campaign to shore up interest in silver competencies came in the form of a supporting quote from Roskill this week for Pinnacle's silver announcement.
"By achieving a silver competency, partners have proven themselves as specialized technology experts with the skills needed to best serve customers," Roskill said. "The silver competency in the Microsoft Partner Network is designed to help customers identify services and solution providers that have demonstrated proof of their capability to deliver quality outcomes and customer satisfaction."
While the multiple silver competency awards for Pinnacle, POD and ePlus are impressive, the highest bar for silver so far was probably set by Catapult Systems back in January. At the time, the Austin, Texas-based NSI announced that it had earned seven gold competencies and a whopping 17 silver competencies.
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.
"Microsoft enjoyed a strong session, with the stock closing up 3.7% at $25.20 -- its best one-day percentage gain since Sept. 13 of last year," Dow Jones MarketWatch reported Monday. And the Tuesday Office 365 launch event itself apparently didn't disappoint either. According to the WSJ.com, Microsoft contributed to the Dow Jones Industrial Average's biggest gain in two months:
"Microsoft gained 60 cents, or 2.4%, to 25.80, building on Monday's gains, as the company unveiled an online version of its Office software suite."
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.
Previous guest hosts included Jeff Shuey, director of business development at Eastman Kodak, and Liza Sisler of Perficient, a St. Louis-based Microsoft National Systems Integrator.
The chat starts at 8:30 a.m. PDT and can be followed by using the #WPC11 hashtag. RCP will be following along for any breaking news.
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 28, 20110 comments