A major Fairfax, Va.-based virtualization solution partner's achievement of the Virtualization Gold Competency in the Microsoft Partner Network provides a window on the pace at which partners are making the transition to Microsoft's new gold competencies.
Accelera Solutions today announced it had gotten the competency. In a statement, Accelera President Joe Brown said, "We're proud to be among the region's elite few to hold gold-tier status for virtualization."
Indeed, the numbers bear out that elite status. Accelera's news release, which included the Microsoft support quotes that indicate it would have been carefully vetted by Microsoft, said Accelera is one of eight partners to receive the Virtualization Gold Competency in Microsoft's East Region. Across Microsoft's three U.S. regions, that suggests there are probably fewer than 25 Microsoft partners with the competency.
Kevin Collins, Microsoft's East Region general manager for managed partners, said, "As one of Microsoft's first Virtualization Gold Competency partners, Accelera affirms its role as a trusted advisor whose services meet Microsoft's highest standards for competency and best practices for delivery."
A look at Accelera's pedigree provides a hint at how difficult the coveted Virtualization Gold Competency is proving to be. It's been more than six months since the launch of the gold competencies in the MPN. Accelera, meanwhile, had held one of the very rare "Services Ready for Virtualization" designations as a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner under the old system. The company also has a large practice with over 1,000 commercial and 200 government customers and also implements virtualization solutions using VMware and Citrix technology.
The numbers show that for now -- at least for virtualization among Microsoft's roughly 30 MPN competencies -- the new gold competency system is working as Microsoft intended: It is radically reducing the number of partners able to brand themselves as gold. We'll be keeping a close eye out for more hints about competency momentum in the run-up to the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in July.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 23, 20111 comments
Even among business users running on Microsoft Exchange, Apple has the momentum when it comes to smartphones and tablets, according to statistics released by one of Microsoft's largest Exchange hosting partners.
Intermedia this month released device activation numbers for all of April for its 320,000 hosted Exchange premium e-mail accounts. It found that Apple iPhones are being activated for synchronization with the accounts at a much faster rate than competitors' smartphones, and the iPad is even more dominant among tablets. (Intermedia was careful to note that no specific user information was reviewed in determining the statistics.)
Intermedia's figures come from the number of customer end users who activated BlackBerry devices on its hosted BlackBerry service and an analysis of devices activated using ActiveSync, the synchronization component in Microsoft Exchange.
According to the New York-based hoster's numbers, new device activations in April broke out as follows:
- 59 percent were iPhones.
- 30 percent were Google Android devices.
- 8 percent were BlackBerry devices.
That leaves 3 percent of activations for all other smartphone platforms, including Windows Phone 7, Symbian and Palm.
The April activations also show how radically Intermedia's overall mix of synchronized smartphones is changing. Counting all activations to date, BlackBerry leads with 46 percent, followed by iPhone with 33 percent and Android with 9 percent. That leaves 12 percent for the other platforms.
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| Source: Intermedia |
On the tablet side, iPad activations by business users are on an upward tear. Intermedia reported that before the launch of the iPad 2, it saw an average of 300 ActiveSync activations of iPads per month. In March that tripled to 900, while in April the figure reached 1,200.
Although other vendors have tried to position their media tablets as more business-focused, the iPad is absolutely dominant among Intermedia's customers. The company says 99.8 percent of tablet activations are iPads.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 19, 20110 comments
The Windows half of the onetime Wintel duopoly isn't saying much about Microsoft's tablet and mobile device strategy in the Windows 8 timeframe, but the Intel half is talking a little.
During a presentation at Intel's Santa Clara, Calif. headquarters on Tuesday reported by Bloomberg and The Register, an Intel senior executive released details of the versions of Windows coming for system-on-a-chip (SoC) hardware and information about legacy Windows application support.
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| Renee James |
Renee James, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Software and Services Group, said to expect a "Windows 8 Traditional" for the x86, which will have a Windows 7 mode for running legacy applications, and to expect a Windows 8 for ARM, which appears to be intended more for an app-like experience. (James called the OS Windows 8, although Microsoft has continued to be cagey about the term, even as a code name.)
"[Windows 8 Traditional] means that our customers, or anyone who has an Intel-based or an x86-based product, will be able to run either Windows 7 mode or Windows 8 mode. They'll run all of their old applications, all of their old files -- there'll be no issue," The Register quoted James as saying.
"On ARM, there'll be the new experience, which is very specifically around the mobile experience, specifically around tablet and some limited clamshell, with no legacy OS," James is quoted as saying. "Our competitors will not be running legacy applications. Not now. Not ever."
James also expanded on Microsoft's announcement from January that Microsoft would support Cambridge, U.K.-based ARM Holdings' SoC architecture. ARM-based processors are especially known for their low power consumption, a key feature for highly portable devices. At the Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft had announced that it is working with three partners leveraging the ARM architecture -- Nvidia Corp., Qualcomm Inc. and Texas Instruments, and noted that it was working with Intel and AMD on presumably non-ARM SoCs.
In an effort to highlight Intel's advantages over the ARM systems, James contended that the ARM-based systems would be balkanized.
According to The Register, James said, "There will be four Windows 8 SoCs for ARM. Each one will run for that specific ARM environment, and they will run new applications or cloud-based applications."
It was unclear from reports about James' remarks whether the fourth SoC version of Windows 8 would be from AMD or another vendor.
While Microsoft regularly notes that OEMs sell several models of Windows-based tablets, the momentum and excitement in the market is in the media tablet segment, which Apple dominates.
The multi-SoC plan, and plans to roll out similar editions for Intel, underscores Microsoft's seriousness about re-engineering its platform to compete in the media tablet space. Microsoft isn't talking much, but the tenor of Jones comments raises the possibility that the user interface of all versions of Windows 8, not just tablets, will represent a major break from the Windows of the past.
UPDATE (5/19): Microsoft has issued one of those non-denial denials in response to Intel's presentation about Windows 8. You can find details here, but the upshot is Microsoft is saying some of the Intel statements were factually inaccurate without, of course, specifying which ones. Intel is clamming up now as well.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 19, 20110 comments
Large customers will soon be able to buy cloud licenses through their Enterprise Agreements and deploy licenses on-premise or in the cloud -- and switch those licenses back and forth.
"New license mobility options will become available July 1, 2011, through Microsoft Volume Licensing agreements with an active Software Assurance benefit," Microsoft said in a statement this week. "The new options will provide customers with the flexibility to deploy application services on-premises or through hosted service providers in the cloud."
The move to add cloud licenses to SA customers is a boon for Large Account Reseller (LAR) partners, who generally serve the 250-seat-and-up market, and could rapidly expand the number of Microsoft customers using cloud services, including the forthcoming Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Windows Intune.
While definitely more convenient for customers, some non-LAR partners could start to see themselves edged out of Partner of Record status in corporate accounts where they've sold Business Productivity Online Suite and other cloud products.
There are two mitigating factors that could keep a lid on conflict. First, indications are that not all that many customers are using BPOS or other online services yet. Second, much of the activity is at the sub-250-seat level, so current and future Partners of Record could be in the clear.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 19, 20110 comments
Lync-focused Microsoft partners like Microsoft's acquisition of Skype, but investors haven't been too enthusiastic.
Maybe that's what prompted Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates to defend Microsoft's largest acquisition today in an interview with the BBC.
"I was a strong proponent at the board level for the deal being done," Gates said on the BBC's Hardtalk show. Much is being made today of Gates' support for the deal, although his comment carefully avoids any suggestion that he might have interfered in CEO Steve Ballmer's job by pushing for the deal at the executive level.
Gates also made clear that he thought the move was strategic and wasn't concerned about Skype's struggles with profitability. "I think it's a great, great deal for Skype. I think it's a great deal for Microsoft," he said.
Obviously the deal had Gates' stamp of approval or it wouldn't have gotten done -- he is the chairman, founder and guiding spirit of Microsoft. But I feel a little more confident about Microsoft's commitment to integrating Skype now that I know Gates fought for the acquisition at the board level. (Some questions have already been raised about a possible conflict of interest involving Gates and Silver Lake Partners, but they seem a bit far-fetched.)
What's your take? Leave a comment below or send me an e-mail at [email protected].
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 18, 20112 comments
Lumbering to the end of another fiscal year, Microsoft has once again revived the popular Big Easy subsidy offer to help partners drive some end-of-year business.
This time, the program for U.S. partners applies to sales between May 2 and June 30. Under the Big Easy offer, customers who make qualifying Microsoft software purchases receive a check for a portion of the total made out to the partner of their choice. The checks can be used for additional Microsoft software, hardware and services.
Products included in the offer are Microsoft Office, Exchange Server, Lync Server, SharePoint Server, Forefront, Windows Server products, Dynamics CRM, Visio, SQL Server, Project, Expression and Visual Studio.
Customers must apply for their subsidies within 30 days of the purchase, and the subsidy checks are valid for 90 days after they are issued. Partners have applauded the subsidy in the past because the subsidy checks often lead to additional work worth several times the amount of the check. At the same time, Microsoft officials have recently acknowledged that the complexity of some partner promotions may be hampering their effectiveness.
The details for the Big Easy are available here.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 16, 20110 comments
Among the details emerging from storage devices recovered during the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden is the revelation that he used e-mail frequently to communicate with other al-Qaida members during his decade in hiding.
This communication occurred despite extensive, and expanded, electronic surveillance efforts to find him by the U.S. government and its allies. (The term ECHELON in the headline refers to the code name popularly used in media accounts for the secret surveillance system for interception of e-mail, phone calls and other electronic communications.*)
Bin Laden's methods will be familiar to any fans of the HBO series "The Wire," in which Baltimore drug gangs followed careful procedures to buy disposable phones from far-flung convenience stores in order to keep their conversations hidden from police wiretapping efforts.
In a report published yesterday based on interviews with a counterterrorism official and a second person briefed on the matter, The Associated Press described bin Laden's process:
"Holed up in his walled compound in northeast Pakistan with no phone or Internet capabilities, bin Laden would type a message on his computer without an Internet connection, then save it using a thumb-sized flash drive. He then passed the flash drive to a trusted courier, who would head for a distant Internet cafe.
"At that location, the courier would plug the memory drive into a computer, copy bin Laden's message into an email and send it. Reversing the process, the courier would copy any incoming email to the flash drive and return to the compound, where bin Laden would read his messages offline.
"It was a slow, toilsome process. And it was so meticulous that even veteran intelligence officials have marveled at bin Laden's ability to maintain it for so long."
This is one of the first of many IT-related revelations likely to come from the trove of storage devices in bin Laden's Pakistan compound. The AP account predicts that electronic addresses and phone numbers in the e-mails will trigger many subpoenas to ISPs.
*Yes, ECHELON is dated and probably narrower than the surveillance efforts in use over the last decade, but I liked the alliteration.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 13, 20116 comments
All the recent interest in tablets and smartphones may be leading to another practice area for channel partners.
In a research announcement this week, market researchers at IDC released survey results showing strong customer interest in mobile printing solutions.
"We are on the verge of a mobile print expansion, and business users will demand and eventually expect print capabilities from their mobile devices," IDC analyst Jonathan Bees said in a statement "This shift away from dependence on desktop PCs and laptops for printing will provide users with the access and mobility they're looking for. Furthermore, mobility is driving print volume."
The IDC survey of 1,480 end users in the United States found that 52 percent of smartphone users want to print from their devices but currently can't. The survey also found that workers who travel moderately are more likely than heavy travelers to increase their print volume.
That mobile printing solutions will grow in importance as smartphones and tablets take on a bigger role in the business world is hardly a leap of logic -- but IDC's new survey shows the market may soon shift from theoretical to real.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 10, 20111 comments
Dell on Monday officially restructured its three-year-old channel program, but Round Rock appears to have only made tweaks around the edges of the program rather than the kind of dramatic moves that might signal a reversion to Dell's direct-first origins.
When Dell launched PartnerDirect in December 2007, the big question was whether the famously direct vendor would remain committed to the channel for very long.
Now, with Dell boasting double the number of partners worldwide -- 60,000 from the 30,000 Dell started with -- and with the program still in existence more than three years later, that question seems to be settled as well as anything is ever settled in business.
The restructuring Monday takes Dell from a two-tier program to three tiers. Formerly partners were either Registered or Certified.
Now partners will be Registered, Preferred or Premier. Requirements and benefits both increase along the three tiers. Preferred Partners must get certified in one of Dell's specialty areas, which include storage, server, systems management, networking/security and managed services. Premier Partners are channel companies with multiple certifications.
"We have made these changes based on our Partners' needs -- strong field support, improved Partner relationships and greater opportunities for Partners who develop skills around Dell solutions. We believe this new structure meets these needs, while maintaining the program simplicity that our Partners appreciate," wrote Greg Davis, vice president and general manager of Dell Global Commercial Channels, in a letter to Dell partners on Monday.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 09, 20110 comments
Publicly, Microsoft executives like Craig Mundie often dismiss the media tablet market. But you can be sure that behind closed doors, Microsoft heavyweights are obsessing over how to make Windows a media tablet player.
An argument that Microsoft's actually got one of the best chances of delivering a successful media tablet comes from a surprising quarter this month.
Bryan Chaffin writes at the Mac Observer that the important thing about the iPad is the experience. In that light, he makes the case that Amazon and Microsoft, more than Google, RIM or HP, are best positioned to compete.
Chaffin's key arguments for Microsoft:
"I believe that Big Redmond's biggest opportunity for creating an experience for a Microsoft tablet is to integrate its tablet with the Xbox. Make it a game controller, make it a means of accessing the Internet and browsing Internet content through your TV, make it a way to chat with your opponents while you are playing, to see additional game content like maps, scores, bonus rewards, whatever. These kinds of things make for an experience that many consumers would find attractive.
"Imagine being able to start off a Kinect video chat on your TV and be able to pick up your Microsoft tablet and take the conversation into the kitchen using a camera on the device without having to change anything? That would rock."
To be sure, Chaffin doesn't think Microsoft will manage to capitalize on the opportunity. Still, it's the rare analysis that's both thoughtful and doesn't count Microsoft entirely out of this game.
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 09, 20110 comments
Solution providers know there are few factors as important to business success as having the brands in their portfolios that customers want.
Global brand equity research and advising firm Millward Brown today released its sixth annual list of the Top 100 most valuable global brands, ranked by Millward Brown's estimate of the value of the brand.
The list provides plenty for Microsoft partners to parse. The top line news is Apple coming out on top for the first time. Millward Brown estimates Apple's brand value at $153 billion, up by 84 percent. Apple took MB's top brand title from Google, which had held the top spot for four years and now falls to second place with a 2 percent drop in brand value to $111 billion. IBM fell from second place last year to third place this year, although MB puts Big Blue's brand value 17 percent higher than in 2010 at $101 billion.
Which brings us to Microsoft, which dropped from fourth place last year to fifth, and for the first time trails a non-tech company (McDonald's is No. 4). According to MB, the value of the Microsoft brand rose 2 percent to $78 billion.
To recap Microsoft's journey through the Millward Brown rankings, the first time MB published the list in 2006, Microsoft was the No. 1 brand worldwide.
Trailing Microsoft that year were non-technology companies like GE and Coca-Cola. Google and IBM had a little more than half of Microsoft's brand value -- Apple at $16 billion had about a quarter of Microsoft's BrandZ value at $62 billion. At the time, Microsoft seemed like an unstoppable technology juggernaut.
Microsoft dropped to No. 2 (behind Google) in 2007 and held on to that spot for two more years in 2008 and 2009.
Last year, the list got shaken up to Microsoft's detriment, with IBM and Apple taking second and third place behind Google, pushing Microsoft down to the fourth spot. Now Apple has catapulted to first.
Among other technology vendors on the list:
- HP is down 11 percent to $35 billion
- Oracle is up 9 percent to $27 billion
- SAP is up 7 percent to $26 billion
- Cisco is down 2 percent to $16 billion
- Intel is down 2 percent to $14 billion
- Canon is up 27 percent to $8 billion
Brands behind two of Microsoft's highest-profile recent partnerships got hammered in the 2011 ranking. The BlackBerry brand is down 20 percent to $25 billion and the Nokia brand is down 28 percent to $11 billion. To put Nokia's drop in perspective, BP only fell 27 percent.
Meanwhile, a few massive systems integrators had some movement in the 2011 list. Accenture's brand value rose 5 percent to $15 billion and Infosys' brand value jumped 27 percent to $8 billion.
In all, the news is better for the Microsoft brand than the Harris Interactive report from earlier this month -- and the company's momentum is favorable compared to some of its peers. Everything can change in a couple of years, as the review of Microsoft's fortunes on this one narrow ranking over six years shows. But Microsoft has lost a lot of ground by this measure.
Is customer perception affecting your decisions to carry Microsoft products, or at least to lead with them? Let me know below or at [email protected].
Posted by Scott Bekker on May 09, 20110 comments
Petronella Computer Consultants Inc. faced the ultimate break-fix problem.
Company President Craig Petronella got a call from one of his biggest managed services customers on the evening of Saturday, April 16, that a tornado had destroyed the customer's offices. Severe storms ripped through North Carolina earlier that day, when what the National Weather Service called a "family of tornadoes" killed 22 people, injured 130 more statewide and caused damage in seven counties.
Petronella and one of his three full-time techs got together and worked late into Saturday night developing a plan for getting the customer, a military medical equipment supplier in Fayetteville, N.C., back online.
Petronella and tech Mitch Greene left first thing on Sunday morning to drive the 60 miles to the customer's site from Raleigh, where Petronella Computer Consultants, a managed IT computer network support services company and a Registered Microsoft Partner, has its headquarters and datacenter.
"It was very difficult to get in because the police had blocked off several roads," Petronella said in a phone interview Wednesday. "It looked like a war zone. There was debris everywhere. Complete houses were destroyed. People with chainsaws were cutting tree limbs to get into their houses. It was just horrible."
Petronella and Greene arrived at 10 a.m. to meet the owner and a few other employees of the military medical supply company at their wrecked office in a strip mall.
"The glass was all blown out the front, and the place was pretty much deemed uninhabitable," Petronella said. The medical supply customer's workers were removing items of value and trying to secure the place.
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| A crate full of Petronella Computer Consultants' managed servers, ready to leave the customer's tornado-damaged office and be reconfigured at the MSP's datacenter. (Source: Craig Petronella) |
In a rack next to a concrete wall, the company's four servers were spared any damage from flying glass or other heavy debris. The group packed up the servers in a crate and pulled them out of the office on a trailer attached to a military Segway, Petronella said.
The next problem was getting the hardware to his car. "We basically had to park in the back and go through a downed fence, downed powerlines and carry the equipment."
Back in the Raleigh datacenter, Petronella and Greene hooked up the servers. "When we fired up the servers, we thought they were going to catch on fire because there was a bunch of black smoke," he said.
That would have been recoverable because his company had backups ready for all the machines, Petronella said. Fortunately, the customer's servers had apparently only inhaled fine debris -- the team concluded the servers must have continued to run after the main damage occurred until the power went out.
Petronella and Greene headed home after a 14-hour workday Sunday. Fellow tech Justin Deffenbaugh continued the job of reconfiguring the servers from their former on-premise role to a new hosted environment on Sunday evening, and Dwight Snow finished the work overnight.
By Monday morning, the customer's servers were online as if nothing had happened, although the military supplier's workers were accessing the servers from their homes and the company is still looking for a new office.
"They're really happy" with their computer services, Petronella said of the customer. "They want to write a testimonial."
Posted by Scott Bekker on April 28, 20110 comments