As Microsoft retires the Gold Certified and Certified tiers of its program this year, partners must find new ways to communicate their expertise in Microsoft technologies to potential customers.
One South Carolina-based Microsoft Certified Partner is using its membership in Microsoft's fledgling U.S. Cloud Champions Club as one way to fill that marketing gap. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 21, 20110 comments
Microsoft hosted about 200 development-focused partner companies in Redmond for product briefings, NDA and otherwise, this week. Attendees included members of the Visual Studio Integration Partner Program (VSIP) and Microsoft Partner Network members in the Application Lifecycle Management competency.
The major piece of public news was the immediate availability of Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2. My colleague Michael Desmond has details on all the bells and whistles in the new beta here. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 17, 20110 comments
One of the key metrics in the smartphone battle is the number of apps in your App Store (or whatever vendors are legally allowed to call them without drawing a lawsuit from Cupertino). On those grounds, Microsoft has had a great week, with news that Microsoft is the fastest smartphone maker yet to hit the psychologically important 10,000-app milestone.
As things stand, Microsoft has a long way to go. The Business Insider blog posted its own count of apps earlier this month. Apple's iPhone led the chart with 350,000 apps, Google's Android was next with 250,000, RIM's BlackBerry had 20,000, and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 had 9,000 at the time. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 17, 20113 comments
Registration for the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference doesn't even start until next week, but Microsoft partner executives were making news last week at such a fast clip that it felt like a WPC was in progress.
The sources for all the activity were Microsoft Partner Advisory Council (PAC) meetings in Redmond, Microsoft meetings with leaders of the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners and, especially, a Web-based interactive forum between senior Microsoft channel executives and several hundred partners on Thursday. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 16, 20110 comments
Facing questions about the value of the silver competency from partners, Microsoft is starting to push the achievement as an exclusive club that will represent only about 5 percent of Microsoft's entire partner ecosystem.
"You've heard the number often quoted [for Microsoft partners] of 640,000 organizations today. Only 5 percent of that community is silver," said Karl Noakes, general manager of Microsoft Partner Strategy and Programs, during the Microsoft Partner Network Interactive Leadership Forum last week. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 16, 20110 comments
Independent software vendors in the Microsoft Partner Network can look forward to an overhaul of the way they fit into Microsoft's partner structure, according to senior Microsoft channel executives.
In an interactive partner forum last week, Microsoft channel executives said they are looking to find better ways to fit vertical ISVs into the MPN, which was relaunched in November under a new framework after a multi-year process. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 16, 20110 comments
Partners using unrenewed Microsoft Gold Certified Partner logos had better watch their backs. Microsoft channel executives are making noises about policing the brand more aggressively.
During a Q&A with partners last week, Microsoft global channel chief Jon Roskill said, "One of the things that we've heard is that [partners] feel that people are out there using a gold brand from several years ago, and they aren't current. That is something that we're looking at -- how we can police that." More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 16, 20111 comments
Back in December, we did a cover story on Microsoft Execs: Who's Who? Poking around the Microsoft Partner Network portal recently, I ran across a nice resource that drills down from the top-level positions that we highlighted in the Redmond Channel Partner magazine article.
The U.S. Partner Team has a Meet the U.S. Partner Team page with pictures, names and titles of 17 people at Microsoft that it wouldn't hurt a partner to know. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 15, 20112 comments
Slalom Consulting, Microsoft's 2010 U.S. Partner of the Year, is on an expansion tear.
The Seattle-based Microsoft National Systems Integrator (NSI) recently announced that it had surpassed 1,000 employees during 2010, and has plans to hire more than 400 new employees this year. The company had about 800 employees when Redmond Channel Partner magazine profiled the company's cloud practice in July. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 15, 20111 comments
Earlier this month, we covered a Microsoft partner subsidy that effectively returns 68 percent of first-year BPOS revenues to partners. It's an eye-popping figure, but the rub is that by the time most partners figure out how the incentive works, it will have expired.
A California-based partner raised the issue with Microsoft channel executives during the Microsoft Partner Network Interactive Leadership Forum on Thursday. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 15, 20110 comments
Perficient, a St. Louis-based IT consulting firm and Microsoft National Systems Integrator (NSI), reported strong fourth quarter earnings and expects to continue its growth trajectory in 2011, according to financial statements released this month.
The NASDAQ-traded company reported 18 percent revenue growth to $55.9 million for the final quarter of 2010 and 14 percent revenue growth to $215 million for the full year. Net income more than doubled to $1.3 million for the quarter and quadrupled to $6.5 million for the year. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 15, 20110 comments
The Zune media player, Microsoft's 5-year-old attempt to answer the Apple iPod, may be about to join the ranks of Microsoft's zombie products.
In a report posted Monday, Bloomberg quoted a source familiar with the decision saying Microsoft would discontinue the player due to low demand and to shift its emphasis to mobile phones. There have been rumblings for weeks that something was happening in the Zune product unit. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 14, 20111 comments