Microsoft took one step closer to general availability of Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials and Windows Home Server 2011 today by issuing release candidates for both products.
Essentials had gone by the code-name "Aurora" while Home Server was referred to as "Vail."
In an e-mail statement announcing the release candidates, Microsoft described Aurora this way: "Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials provides a cost-effective and easy-to-use solution to help protect data, organize and access business information from virtually anywhere, support the applications needed to run a business and quickly connect to online services for e-mail, collaboration and CRM."
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Posted by Scott Bekker on February 03, 20110 comments
Microsoft Financing has some new blood at the top. According to a Microsoft PR-produced featur
e story posted today, the general manager of Microsoft Financing is now Seth Eisner. Longtime former GM Brian Madison joined Key Equipment Finance as senior vice president of U.S. vendor alliances in November. Eisner's LinkedIn profile puts him in his current job since August. Prior to taking over Microsoft Financing he was GM of investments and acquisitions for Microsoft.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on February 01, 20110 comments
Microsoft and SAP AG are trying to make it easier for their respective partners to resell the other's wares in integrated solutions with a new program called the SAP-Microsoft Unite Partner Connection.
The two companies launched the program today in conjunction with the general availability of Duet Enterprise, software that connects Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and SAP solutions.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on February 01, 20110 comments
Registration for the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference will open on March 23, the company announced Friday on the Digital WPC site.
"You’ll be able to take advantage of our Early Bird partner registration price that gives you a $300 savings off the Standard partner registration price," Microsoft said in the announcement.
WPC is Microsoft's biggest event of the year, with more than 10,000 attendees, including partners, vendors and Microsoft partner executives. This year's WPC is being held in Los Angeles from July 10-14.
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 31, 20110 comments
Another quarter is in the books, and Microsoft's revenues and profits keep soaring. By now you've seen the headline numbers for the quarter that ended Dec. 31 -- nearly $20 billion in revenues, net income of $6.63 billion, 24 percent growth in Microsoft Business Division revenues on the back of Office 2010, 8 million Kinect sensors sold in the first 60 days, Windows 7 license sales hit 300 million and Internet Explorer 9 downloads crossed 20 million.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 31, 20110 comments
Earlier this month, I suggested that there was a coded message when Jon Roskill, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group, recently blogged on town hall meetings for Microsoft partners. I argued that Roskill might be signaling that partners should stay tuned for an announcement that they would be able to bill customers directly for the Business Productivity Online Suite/Services. Roskill took a break from midyear reviews to e-mail me a response last week. Here's what he had to say:
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 31, 20115 comments
Jon Roskill, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group, put up an innocuous-looking entry on his "Partner Perspective" blog yesterday.
In it, Roskill sings the praises of listening to partner feedback, which of course every vendor says they value but few really do effectively. Roskill writes, "Some of you already know that I think Town Hall style meetings are great forums for us to meet in person and have meaningful discussions."
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Posted by Scott Bekker on January 13, 20112 comments
The Azure Platform, Windows Phone 7 and Internet Explorer were big topics at the Professional Developers Conference last week. The high-level takeaways: Microsoft tried to put a freeze on any developer drift to Google Chrome while it readies IE9, the company issued a call-to-arms for developers to write apps for Windows Phone 7 and there's a ton of new stuff coming to the Azure Platform. Kathleen Richardson has the details here.
Posted by Scott Bekker on November 01, 20100 comments
Microsoft reported their earnings late last week after our last RCPU of the week went out. Since it's World Series time, we'll go with the baseball analogy -- Microsoft hit it out of the park.
The results were powered in part by Windows 7 sales, which include a little fudging of about $1.5 billion in revenue deferred from the first quarter of last year from a Windows 7 upgrade program. But the headline numbers are $16.2 billion in revenues (a 25 percent jump) and net income of $5.4 billion (a 51 percent jump). See Chris Paoli's article for more on the numbers.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on November 01, 20100 comments
The Microsoft Partner Network went all the way to reality Monday, when Microsoft turned on the new MPN site and made it possible for partners to begin re-enrolling in the new Gold Competencies. "[We've got our] fingers crossed, but we're feeling really excited about it," Jon Roskill told Redmond Channel Partner magazine in an interview Friday. The full story is here, with lots of detail about what the changes to the MPN are and what they could mean.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on November 01, 20100 comments
It's always interesting to scan through the comments at the infamously anonymous employee blog Mini-Microsoft when there's a major executive shakeup in Redmond, like Ray Ozzie's pending departure. Reaction to the Ozzie news is mixed over there. But more specifically, there's an anonymous post from a commenter claiming to be on the corporate sales force that's relevant to partners and the Microsoft Online Services effort. You can never tell, but there's enough detail in the post to make it seem credible. Money quote:
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Posted by Scott Bekker on October 20, 20100 comments