Microsoft's Ligman: Back to the U.S. Partner Group

Eric Ligman, who has been a main social media face of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group for the past three years, is heading back to his former home in Microsoft's U.S. partner organization and a less public role.

Ligman blogged last week that his role as the lead for the Small and Midmarket Solutions and Partners (SMS&P) Customer and Partner Experience is ending. He is now the Microsoft Sales Excellence Program Manager for U.S. SMS&P.

In his post, Ligman also makes clear that whoever replaces him won't be communicating directly with partners -- the role of the CPE lead is changing and also moving from the Worldwide Partner Group to Worldwide SMS&P. If you're interested in more of the inside baseball details, check out Ligman's lengthy post.

Eric's done a lot in his WPG role to keep Microsoft partners up to speed on a lot of initiatives, and he's gone out of his way many times to highlight opportunities and to clarify confusing elements of Microsoft policies that were causing pain to partners.

As a journalist covering Microsoft for partners, I'll miss what Eric was doing. I think Microsoft is making a mistake if the move signifies that it's downplaying the importance of having a public figure who can address some problems and offer an official context on other issues in an informal framework. Other WPG executives could pick up that function on their blogs; we'll see over the next few months if they choose to do that.

Nonetheless, knowing how energetic and communicative Eric is, I'm confident we'll be hearing more from him in the future. Let's hope so.

Posted by Scott Bekker on January 14, 2013 at 11:58 AM