As Apple got ready to roll out the iPad 2, RCPmag.com ran a story on "23 Intriguing iPad Apps for Microsoft Partners." For the April print issue of Redmond Channel Partner magazine, we expanded that list to 47 apps, with new entries in the categories of Microsoft Office Integration, Integration with Microsoft Servers and Remote Desktop. We also added an entire category called Heterogeneous Kit. If you read the original version and just want to see the 24 newly added apps, look for the items numbered in red.
Posted by Scott Bekker on April 04, 20110 comments
One of the thorniest decisions Microsoft partners face this year is how to slot their companies into the newly changed structure of the Microsoft Partner Network. Companies that have been Gold Certified Partners for years must decide in 2011 which competency or competencies they'll focus on. Even with that decision made, they must then choose whether to pursue that competency to the gold level or to the silver level, or forego the competencies altogether and concentrate on just being a Small Business Specialist or Action Pack subscriber. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 31, 20110 comments
Count me among the skeptics on the recent IDC forecast that puts Windows Phone's market share in second place in 2015 behind Google Android. The market research firm basically transferred Nokia's Symbian market share now to Microsoft later. I know IDC's job is to quantify the unquantifiable (and I think it does it as responsibly as possible), but the smartphone market is moving way, way too fast and too unpredictably for anyone to make worthwhile forecasts even three months out, let alone for 2015.
A Microsoft blog post this week emphasized the only kinds of numbers that are worth much right now: current data. In a post called "A Year Later -- The Windows Phone 7 Numbers That Matter," Brandon Watson put the focus on developers. That's the right place to concentrate efforts for now, and developers have been Microsoft's main focus in many of the company's successful efforts in the past. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 31, 20110 comments
- Keep updated with the latest WPC news at RCP's WPC 2011 page here.
We blogged on Monday that although registration for the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference was underway, session information was a little behind schedule. Since then, Microsoft has posted details on 48 sessions coming to WPC in July.
That's probably less than a quarter of the total number of sessions that will be held, but a few sessions are already catching our attention. In no particular order, here are 11 interesting sessions on the schedule for WPC '11 in Los Angeles. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 29, 20110 comments
The Microsoft high-value promotion that returns up to 68 percent of first-year Business Productivity Online Suite revenues to U.S. partners got an extension for most of April.
MicrosoftSMB tweeted Monday, "The deadline for [Microsoft's] Business Productivity Online Services reward has been extended to 4/18!" The BPOS Customer Rewards Offer had been scheduled to expire April 1. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 29, 20110 comments
A new analyst report shows a rebound in merger and acquisition activity among tech vendors in 2010, providing a fuller picture of the backdrop to much of the dealmaking among solution providers last year.
In its "2010 Tech M&A Analysis Report" released this week, IDC analysts identified 1,900 M&A deals worth over $200 billion in the information and communications technology sector. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 29, 20110 comments
Even as early-bird registration is off to an apparently fast start, the specifics for the keynotes and sessions in the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference are relatively sparse.
Microsoft is currently promising keynotes from CEO Steve Ballmer, COO Kevin Turner and Jon Roskill, corporate vice president of the Worldwide Partner Group. Ballmer and Turner are regular keynoters at WPC. Roskill stepped into Allison Watson's role during WPC last year, both as Microsoft's worldwide channel chief and as a combination keynoter and master of ceremonies for the week-long show. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 28, 20110 comments
- Keep updated with the latest WPC news at RCP's WPC 2011 page here.
Interest in the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference was so strong when early-bird registration began last week that the spike in activity caused problems on Microsoft's registration page.
"We are currently experiencing high registration volumes and are actively addressing the issues. We will publish an updated news item as soon as these issues have been resolved. Thank you for your patience and we look forward to seeing you in LA this July," Microsoft wrote on the WPC event blog on March 23, the day early-bird registration opened. The problem was fixed about 45 minutes later, according to a subsequent post. Neither post explained the problems. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 28, 20110 comments
Microsoft is making an all-out effort to attract managed services providers to its new cloud-based Windows Intune platform, commissioning best practice guidance for partners from IDC and integrating with both major professional services automation platforms.
One of the big questions around Windows Intune was how serious Microsoft was about the MSP market. MSPs have never really had a specific landing place in the Microsoft Partner Network. Microsoft toyed with providing MSP tools in the past with a special version of System Center, but later backed away from that product. Even with Windows Intune, the MSP play seemed like an afterthought to a product intended for in-house IT departments, with Microsoft only adding the critical multi-account console in the Beta 2 release in July. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 28, 20110 comments
Every Microsoft partner knows that there's a multiplier around Microsoft revenues that winds up in partners' pockets. It's why there's a Microsoft channel, or why any vendor has a channel.
How much that ecosystem is worth is anyone's guess. Microsoft makes a college try at quantifying it every year or so with the help of market researchers at Framingham, Mass.-based IDC. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 24, 20110 comments
Vanity Fair, which does some of the best general-interest, magazine-length journalism in the country, published an exhaustive 11-page article for its April issue on Stuxnet.
Author Michael Joseph Gross nails the central issue when he concludes that Stuxnet is "something new under the sun." Although some critics accuse Gross of breathlessness in his declaration that "Stuxnet is the Hiroshima of cyber-war," the statement seems warranted. It's fairly obvious that Gross isn't arguing that Stuxnet threatens Armageddon the way the uranium bomb on Hiroshima did in 1945. A sympathetic reading is that Stuxnet represents the point when something previously theoretical or only lab-tested is unleashed in pursuit of national aims and changes future geopolitical calculations. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 22, 20111 comments
Partners that are slow out of the gate on selling the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Services can take heart from a recently leaked set of Microsoft data.
Joe Panettieri of Talkin' Cloud published what he described as a Microsoft-generated list of the top 10 U.S. channel partners by BPOS deals deployed. He said the list came from sources close to Microsoft. More
Posted by Scott Bekker on March 22, 20111 comments