Darcy Burner's WebLog

Wandering aloud

2004-11-28T09:29:00Z

The astute among you may have noticed that I haven't posted in awhile. The short explanation is that I left Microsoft. The slightly longer explanation is this: while I was doing my day job at Microsoft, I was also spending my so-called free time as the chair of Microsoft's women's organization ("Hoppers", named for Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, who pioneered much of modern software). What I discovered was that while I liked my day job pretty well, I loved working on bigger sociopolitical issues. Microsoft, like all human institutions, has significant imperfections in how well it lives up to its values. I spent a lot of time looking at the difference between Microsoft's ideal of itself as a true meritocracy for employees and the reality where talented, dedicated, ambitious women have more difficulty advancing than comparable men. This is not (in my experience) generally due to intentional discrimination; it is the result of much more subtle factors than that.

At any rate, what I realized was that I wanted to take the kind of work I was passionate about and make it what I spend all of my time working on. To that end, I applied to, was accepted to, and am currently enrolled in law school. I intend to eventually enter the political arena. (I thought that it might be useful, if I was going to make laws, to first understand how they actually work...)

The importance of network effect

2004-04-07T21:38:00Z

Most ISVs, Microsoft included, are very focused on technology issues. What are the features in the latest version of our product? What features do we have that the competition doesn’t? Are we faster? Is our user interface easier to use?

When I graduated from college and started working as a programmer at Lotus, I was convinced that the market for software was a technology-based meritocracy, and that whoever built the best software would win. Developers, I thought, held the keys to the kingdom. Build it and they will come.

It did not take very long, however, for me to realize that I was wrong. That wasn’t how it worked. How did I know this? Because I was losing miserably to Microsoft. I worked on Lotus SmartSuite, which was a direct competitor to Microsoft Office. Our products were, in my opinion, better products. They were more stable. They had more features (including some that were extremely useful – like the ability to create chapters in documents, and tab through those chapters). And our suite cost less than $100, as compared to Office’s $500 and up per copy. By everything I understood about how the software market ought to work, we should have won. Yet we didn’t – we lost.

I can’t stand not understanding why something that affects me is happening. So I decided, after about two years as a professional developer, that I was going to figure out what it was that really mattered if it wasn’t technology.

My first suspect was sales, and so I spent a couple of years in technical sales roles in small ISVs, and eventually figured out that sales simply didn’t scale. Every sale was hard and expensive. It never got easier, and it never got less expensive. We couldn’t afford to buy the services of enough sales people to make a significant difference.

The sales people pointed the finger at marketing. That seemed believable. But when I moved into marketing I discovered that the set of marketing communications activities we were engaged in simply didn’t get enough traction to move the needle.

About this time, it occurred to me that perhaps if I wanted to understand success, it might be sensible to understand a company that was successful. (I’d already developed a pretty good understanding of companies that were unsuccessful.) So I did the obvious thing, and came to Microsoft. Here’s what I learned at Microsoft: marketing is part of the difference. But an area that doesn’t even have a name at most companies is a bigger deal.

When we sit down to discuss our strategy around some particular product, a big part of what we discuss in the early stages is, “How will it be easier for us to make money when the 1000th customer is buying this than it was when the first customer was?” This is a really important question, and in my experience, many software vendors not only don't know the answer, but don't know that they should be asking the question. (Certainly I didn't think of it in my pre-Microsoft days, even though it would have been incredibly helpful.)

Let’s take a look at some possible answers to this question.

How is it easier to sell the thousandth copy of Microsoft Word than it was to sell the first copy? For the first copy, I have to sell based on product features head-to-head with the competition, which can only happen once I can get your attention, correctly figure out what information you need, and provide a compelling comparison. (That is, I can tell you from experience, a lot of work.) But one interesting thing about word processors is that people exchange documents with each other. Once you reach a critical mass of adoption—once a potential customer knows that the people they want to exchange documents with are all using Microsoft Word—then the ease of document exchange combined with the availability of informal help in figuring out how to use the product provide both a set of benefits that override simple feature comparisons and a way that product awareness happens without Microsoft needing to do anything directly.

Network effect, then, is one possible answer to the business strategy question. (It’s one of the big reasons WordPro lost to Word all those years ago.) The key here is to identify a strategy that has a point of critical mass of adoption – and then bootstrap to that point. This trategy is obviously not unique to Microsoft; Macromedia Flash, Adobe Acrobat, Napster, and QuickBooks are all other examples of this strategy in action. (The coupling of a free reader with a for-profit writer seems especially popular recently.) If you are a small software company, it makes sense to try to create a dynamic for your business that works in this way if you can, rather than going the more traditional sales brute-force method. I mean, it’s all good and well to put an enormous amount of effort into selling every copy of your product if you’re Oracle and can charge tens of thousands of dollars per sale, but how many companies can afford that kind of investment in their sales force?

Other ISV business-related information can be found at Microsoft's Partner Program Business Builder content; it's also the case that Eric Sink has some very interesting information in his MSDN column and on his site. I also talked some about positioning and messaging in an earlier post to this blog.

The software crisis

2004-02-25T17:41:00Z

Jim Fawcette, president of Fawcette Technical Publications, talked in his most recent blog entry about the decline in programming jobs and wages, which he attributes to a combination of offshoring and the increasing productivity of developer tools. He goes on to cite productivity improvements in Visual Studio as a bad thing, based on the idea that if one programmer can do what five programmers used to do, that four programmers are going to be sent packing without jobs.

I think that he’s wrong. He’s basing his argument on the assumption that there’s a fixed amount of programming to be done, and that we’re at capacity. That assumption doesn’t make any sense.

There is a crisis in the software industry, and has been for a long time, which is that we can’t develop software fast enough. There are all kinds of problems we still need to solve where all of the pieces of the infrastructure except the software are in place, and we’re just waiting on having sufficient development capacity to create the software.

Let me give you a few examples:

Medical diagnosis modeling: When I go to the doctor’s office, it ought to be true that a piece of software should be able to analyze my current symptoms, vital statistics, test results, medical history, and local epidemiology information in order to direct my medical professionals to the correct tests to perform to narrow down possibilities – or provide suggested diagnoses. This would be faster, substantially less expensive, and far more accurate than the current unassisted model of diagnosis – all that’s missing is the software. (And then, in countries where private insurance applies, billing of my insurance company should happen completely automatically, saving something like 65% of every healthcare dollar spent.) Potential payoff: billions.
Shipping systems: If I need to get some object from point A to point B anywhere in the world, I ought to be able to go online and have some software figure out for me what the most cost-effective shipping method will be based on my constraints, and that software should make all of the necessary arrangements on my behalf – even if what I’m shipping is an elephant or a ton of grain. Again, the software is missing.
Traffic: Why is it not already the case that I get told the fastest way home based on current traffic conditions? The GPS technology is good enough, the maps exist, we even monitor the traffic. Software, software, software.
Shopping: I want a new scanner – an HP 4670, to be precise, and I want it by the end of the week. Is it cheapest to get it at the local Staples, Office Depot, Fry’s, Circuit City, or Target? Or should I pay the shipping and get it from Buy.com or Amazon? Why isn’t it an easy thing for me to calculate? Software again could solve the problem.

There is no shortage of potential software projects that could solve real world problems, with real payoff, that would be worth more than enough to pay good employee salaries to every reasonably skilled programmer in the world.

Increasing the worldwide capacity for developing software is a good thing. Increasing it by increasing the number of skilled engineers in the world is good; increasing it by increasing the productivity of each of those software engineers is good. We are a very, very long way from a world in which a dollar invested in software development won’t generate a return of many times more than a dollar. We are not at capacity. And I, for one, am thrilled that we’re starting to make progress on breaking through the bottleneck.

Master classes

2004-02-10T06:25:00Z

We've been thinking about how we should provide the best, most valuable content we can to large numbers of software vendors. There are some channels through which Microsoft already does a fairly decent job of this: MSDN and the Professional Developer's Conference come readily to mind. On an ongoing basis, though, we've been discussing how best to get highly valuable information to ISVs who will actually use it in a timely and compelling manner. (In the last week alone I've spent something like 20 hours talking this issue through with members of my team, some of my peers, and my management.)

One idea we've come up with (credit goes to Betsy Steele, the woman on my team who regularly works miracles for ISVs and runs the .NET Connected logo program in her spare time) is to create a series of “master classes” for ISVs. The idea goes something like this: if you're an ISV and you're going to develop on one of our strategic new technologies, in exchange for pledging to develop an application that supports that technology, we'll provide you with free access to a set of live, interactive webcasts with key members of the development teams working on the technologies. They could then describe the parts of the technologies they're working on that would be likely to affect you as software vendors, and you could ask questions, both via the LiveMeeting chat feature and on a call-in basis. (That pledge to develop an application, incidentally, would also get you other things to improve your odds of succeeding, like free email tech support for issues related to the technology in question.)

That leads me to a whole series of questions, though.

Are webcasts a compelling medium? Would you take an hour of your time to attend one, assuming it was participatory and not just somebody blathering on to a bunch of slides?
Who would you most want webcasts with? The product architects? The program managers who have spec'd out the features? The product managers whose job it is to tell you what the product does and is for (and who could help you understand how to describe it to your customers)? The developers who have worked on certain features? The documentation folks who are documenting what the product actually does and how it can be used? (This could have the added benefit of improving the documentation, of course.) Someone else?
How many webcasts would you consider attending over the course of a year? Who in your company would attend? (Developers? Architects? Marketing folks? Management?)
Have you ever attended a Microsoft webcast? If not, what would make you consider trying it? Would you rather we just stuck to white papers?
What is the earliest you would have any interest in starting development on a new technology like, say, the next version of SQL Server? At beta 1, when it's newly stable? At beta 2, when it's feature locked? At RTM1? At launch? After everyone else has already figured out whether it works or not?

Thanks to the people who attended my webcast last week, by the way. You were an unusually attentive group; nearly everyone stayed for the whole thing. Of course, it probably helped that I wrapped it up in 34 minutes rather than the hour it was scheduled for. You probably didn't have time to leave before it ended!

I'm doing a webcast this morning

2004-02-04T16:19:00Z

I'll be talking about programs available to ISVs to help them develop on new and upcoming technologies. If you're interested in attending - I will be taking Q&A both online and live at the end - you can register at http://members.microsoft.com/partner/isv/worktog/seminars.aspx.

IMO: What Microsoft does right that other software vendors could learn from

2004-01-30T01:55:00Z

One of my principal motivations for joining Microsoft four years ago (when the .com boom was still in full swing and Microsoft was a very unfashionable place to be!) was because I wanted to understand what they were doing differently than the other companies I'd worked for or been exposed to. Lotus made great products when I was there (and may still, for all I know), and yet SmartSuite lost to Office. CenterLine struggled to a gasping death, never really quite getting it together. Asymetrix (nee Click2Learn) has still not found its market, and every quarter is a struggle to fend off insolvency. This general pattern is true at the companies my friends work for and have worked for as well; we all work hard, we build a company, we struggle, and eventually we fail and move on to the next company. The churn is remarkable; ISV ecosystem is not healthy, and as far as I can tell it has never been healthy. So I've seen all kinds of ways for ISVs to fail. I was hoping Microsoft could show me how they could succeed.

And boy has it been an education working here. (An MBA ain't got nothin' on the real world, baby!) Here is the first of the three most important “ah-hah!“ moments I've had in the last four years:

Most software companies totally screw up marketing. Because of this, your opinion of marketing is probably rather, um, low. But the failure of marketing is the single most consistent thing I can point to as an answer to the question, “Why did that product fail?“

Let me start by defining marketing - I think that will help. Engineers build what I refer to as the “physical product“ (even though it's only bits - I know - humor me here). It's the thing that exists in the real world, that you ship to customers, that has functionality. The role of marketing is to build in the mind of the customer the complementary “mental product“: the clear picture of what the thing is that you want them to buy and how they would use it. You have to build the mental product before you can get somebody to buy the physical product. If your customers don't have a clear, effortless picture in their heads of exactly how they'll use what you're providing, they're not going to buy it.

Let's look at a quick example. Suppose you engineer a pointy metal thing with a handle at one end and tines at the other. It's the finest stainless steel, it's beautifully engineered, it's got great balance, you're very proud of it, you use it for everything, and you're ready to ship it. Since you've built it, they will come! Right?

Okay, so how do you get people excited about it?

It's a multi-purpose tool. You can use it for all kinds of things! It can untangle hair. It can be used as a weapon of self-defense. It can pry things open. It can be used as a musical instrument if you bang it on things! You can use it to pick up food without getting your hands dirty. It will help you draw a series of roughly parallel lines by providing a guide. It's even a fashion accessory!

Are you ready to buy it yet? Yet this is the way most software marketing is done. In a world in which new markets are constantly being created and new products are constantly being introduced and new features are constantly being added to existing products, the level of information overload is spectacular. When we turn around and add to the information overload and expect our potential customers to take the time and energy to figure out from the breadcrumbs we drop what a possible scenario is in which they might use our products, we deserve what we get, which in most cases is failure. And if you're an engineer, you can and should point the finger at your marketing people, but you also need to understand that the engineers often play a role in this fiasco by insisting that every possible use of a product be enumerated in every communication.

Instead, we need to be clear and simple in building the mental product.

It's a fork. You can use it to scoop up a bunch of little food or stab and cut big food while you're eating. It's polite to use it; it keeps your fingers from getting messy, and allows you to cut food into smaller bites. When you're eating little things like peas or rice, you can pick up a whole bunch of them at once with the fork, making it easier and quicker to eat them. So it makes eating a lot of different kinds of food easier and less messy.

But in order to tell that story, we have to choose. We cannot tell the story of every possible use of a fork. We cannot talk about all of the cool features of the fork (“See how the stainless steel gleams in the light!“) in the absence of their direct applicability to something people might do with the fork. And we can't change our minds with every communication about what story we're going to tell about how a customer should imagine using the fork.

There is a lot more I could say about basic positioning and messaging, but that's it in a nutshell. The hardest thing, quite frankly, is having to choose. And Microsoft has mechanisms in place to force marketers to choose their messages, to clarify them, and to communicate them consistently internally and externally. It's a huge part of why Microsoft's marketing has traditionally been so much more successful than the industry's at large.

I won't go into detail about my other two big ah-hahs, but they are in brief:

Strong program management makes a huge difference - these are the people who are responsible for specs and schedules, for making sure you're building the right product for your market, and that your timing and feature set are optimal. This is a different discipline than development, test, or marketing, though it has significant interaction with all of those disciplines.
Microsoft has a core strength in business model strategy. The question to ask yourself (in addition to the obvious, “Gee, do the numbers work out at all in even the most optimistic scenario?“) is , “How will the 1000th sale of this product be easier than the first sale, and the 10,000th sale be easier than the 1,000th?“

Most software companies are capable of putting together code that will compile. Where they fail is in making sure they're building the right product, that their customers have a very clear understanding of how and why they would use that product, and that the way they sell and get paid for the product will actually scale.

A tisket, a tasket, a logo in your basket?

2004-01-29T09:31:00Z

In my current role, I'm the Microsoft business owner for the .NET Connected logo program:

Because a significant portion of my job involved providing training and information about Windows Server 2003 to ISVs, I also spend time thinking about the Certified for Windows Server 2003 program:

I meet regularly with the folks who own the Certified Partner program:

And there are a whole bunch of other Microsoft logo programs for ISVs, including my personal favorite graphic, which I think I'd build a product for just because it would be so cool to use the logo:

My question is this: do they help? Do ISVs currently find value in being able to affiliate their products with Microsoft and with specific Microsoft technologies? Does it give you credibility with your customers? And if you don't think they currently help, is that because logo programs in general just don't work for you, or because we need to do more to drive customer demand around the specific logo or logos in which you're interested?

On opting in and opting out

2004-01-28T00:42:00Z

I've developed a bad habit. Whenever I'm asked for marketing information and then given one of those checkboxes which allows me to specify that I don't want anybody to contact me, I click it so that nobody will contact me. It's an understandable reaction, I think, to the overwhelming amount of spam in my inbox and junk mail in my snailmailbox, but I have come to realize, from the other side of the problem, someof the drawbacks.

For instance, we're giving away free VeriTest application testing for ISVs. If you're thinking of joining the Microsoft Partner Program, or you're just interested in getting and using the .NET Connected logo, this is a terrific deal - up to $1200 in savings, no strings attached. You don't have to agree to do anything or use anything or pay Microsoft anything. The test is just out-and-out free, yours for the asking.

So how can I let ISVs know that the offer is available? Well, we had thousands of ISVs sign up for a Windows Server 2003 readiness program in the last year, and since one of the tests is the “Verified for Windows Server 2003” test, it's a natural match. You'd think that I could just send them mail saying, “Hey, if you want it, you can have this free test.” The problem is that the vast majority of them - just as I would have - opted out. So I can't contact them at all, even though a significant percentage of them would be likely to be interested. (Microsoft is VERY stringent about protecting customer privacy; we employees are held accountable for adhering absolutely to expressed customer privacy preferences. Which is just as it should be, IMO.)

Now, we corporate customer-facing folks have created this problem for ourselves, in a number of ways. First, lazy marketers have sent out gobs of irrelevant information to people who simply don't care about it, making the signal-to-noise ratio a lot worse than it had to be. Then there are a bunch of companies/people who don't give you any reasonable way to opt out if you've ever acidentally opted in. (I once closed an email account because it was being regularly maxed out by email I didn't want from TheStreet.com, who were sending it from a variety of email addresses I didn't at the time have a good way to filter, and who didn't give me any way to turn off the flow...) But as those of us at the receiving end choose to simply turn off the flow, we need to be aware that we are shutting off the signal at the same time we shut down the noise.

Don't you think there'd be a market for an intelligent opt-in filter which sent you information on only things you actually did want to hear about? We could do collaborative filtering and personalized ratings. (In the corner of every mail could be a scale from 0-10 on aptness, which would affect both the reputation of the sender and which things you got sent in the future.) It's the next logical step beyond spam filters, in that it also filters legitimate mail, in both a forward-it-to-people-who-are-actually-interested way and a block-it-for-people-who-don't-want-it way. (I, for instance, definitely want to opt in on any mail Adobe sends out offering free copies of Photoshop. I'll also happily accept sale notices from Title 9 Sports and Team Estrogen. But AT&T can take me off of all of their lists, as I'm so turned off by the incessant phone calls and junk mail that I'll never sign up for anything they ever offer me again - even when they called the other night to offer me 30 minutes a month of free long distance, no fees, I said no, just on principle.)

In the short term, that leads to the following question: what kind of communications channel would you want Microsoft to use to let you know of things you'd actually care about? If there were a newsletter or a program you could sign up for that sent you only stuff you might actually be interested in, would you opt in? If not, is it because we couldn't offer anything you'd be interested in, or just because you're already so overwhelmed by communication? (And if that's true, what the heck are you doing reading a blog?)

The disconcerting thing about being a Microsoft employee

2004-01-27T01:35:00Z

So as I said in an earlier post, I've been at Microsoft for almost four years. I worked in other places in the industry prior to that, in a variety of roles, including in technical sales roles. I've talked to a lot of customers, and I still have a lot of friends at other companies in the industry. When I was working for other companies and talking to customers, it was common to start at neutral and eventually gain someone's trust when it became clear that you were being straight with them. Coming from Microsoft, though, it's far more common that I start a conversation with a customer or partner from a huge negative trust position, and it becomes clear that nothing I do or say will ever change it.

This can lead to some funny incidents, in which I say something as obvious and straightforward as, “The sky is blue,” and that statement is met with suspicion. But it also means in some cases that people shoot themselves in the foot. Take the Empower program, which gives small ISVs deeply discounted access to Microsoft technologies to help them develop their first product. I've been slowly getting the impression that there are a lot of people who could benefit from it, but are convinced it's somehow intended to trick or trap them. Really, it's a good deal... and you can believe me because it's obvious how Microsoft's interests align with yours. But is there something I can say, really, that will convince one of you who is a skeptic that there's no trap?

On programs for small ISVs

2004-01-27T01:00:00Z

I got a fair amount of feedback on my first post, all of it (so far) very constructive. So today let's walk through some of the queries posed. (Microsoft legal would like me to add the following disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Now that that's out of the way...)

First, let's start with

...I would like to hear how [s]he believes the small ISV fits into the picture with Microsoft. (Avonelle Lovhaug)

Senior management at Microsoft has recently become very interested in small- and medium-sized ISVs (what we call the “breadth ISV community“). In the last year, many millions of dollars have been spent on programs designed especially for small ISVs. That means, quite frankly, that now is a terrific time to be an ISV startup building on the Microsoft platform, because we're going to throw resources at you to try to help you succeed. Why, that's my job (in partnership with a whole bunch of other people over here at the edge of the campus): figure out how to make small software vendors building on the Microsoft platform successful. Let me give you some examples of the stuff we're doing:

On the technology side, we're

Continuing to make all kinds of information available for free on MSDN;
Providing heavily subsidized training for ISVs worldwide on key technologies, like Windows Server 2003, .NET, and smart clients (information about these is sent out locally - this is a good reason to let Microsoft contact you when you sign up for stuff, because if you say “Do not contact me“, we won't, even when you wish we would, and we're completely paranoid about privacy - but that's a topic for a different blog entry);
Making information and select MS Press books available for free for those key technologies, just by signing up for one of our technical enablement initiatives and saying you're interested;
And of course there's the much-discussed-on-this-thread Empower program. Yes, it is an unbelievably good deal. (Microsoft is heavily subsidizing this program - and we'd like to lose more money by having even more ISVs sign up. <grin> Our targets for this fiscal year, which ends in June, are very aggressive. Feel free to tell everyone you know about it.) For $375, you get an MSDN Universal subscription with 5 user licenses, as well as appropriate other technologies to make it possible to get up and running at minimal cost. All Microsoft is really asking in return is that you actually make an effort to develop and ship a commercial application on the Microsoft platform and become a partner eventually.

But as a small ISV, I'm worried about agreeing to things that will end up costing me a lot of money. For example, while it doesn't say this everywhere, in the program guide for Empower is says this about the requirements: "Upon expiration of your membership, make a reasonable commercial effort to join the Microsoft Certified Partner Program based on successfully passing one of the software tests authorized by Microsoft and listed in the table below**." From what I can tell, getting my software tested is going to cost me $800 or more. (Avonelle Lovhaug)

Did I mention that we're even subsidizing the tests right now?

On the business/sales/marketing side,

IMO the toughest thing about becoming an ISV on a small scale is that there's a huge fundamental difference between writing code and producing,selling, and supporting software products. (Scott Sargent)

I have a coworker upstairs, Kevin, who Microsoft Business Builder courses, designed to help ISVs succeed on the business side - in particular, a Business Strategy course, a Financial Forecasts course, and a Business Plans course. These courses are entirely free, on the theory (I think) that Microsoft benefits sufficiently if our ISVs are more successful than our competitors' ISVs, and so we should do what we can to make them successful.

I would love to know, though, what other things on the business side you could use help with. Microsoft has a bevy of activities it does on the business side of the house which it seems to me might be useful to our ISVs to understand. Do you understand product positioning and messaging? Do you understand how to do market analysis? (And would you trust Microsoft to show you how to do this?)

And one final query for today:

Given the impact that our IT environment has on students, and consequently the future knowledge workers in the US, it would seem in Microsoft's interests to assist [Universities]. (Danny Boyd)

My impression is strongly that Microsoft agrees that Universities are critical. We do, in fact, offer substantial discounts to Universities through the MSDN Academic Alliance program. In this program, a department can for $799 US license pretty much all of the Microsoft software you could want for academic purposes, and that includes licenses for lab machines, for professors, and for students, including for use on student personal computers. (That's a far better deal than we're offering ISVs - or anyone else.)

Software vendors, aka "ISVs" in Microspeak

2004-01-24T01:03:00Z

Imagine, if you will, that there is somebody in Microsoft whose job it is to make sure that companies who want to develop software on the Microsoft platform have everything they need to do so successfully. They need to have developer tools like Visual Studio, they need information (MSDN and MS Press books, for instance), they might need training. That's not all, though. What else do software companies need in order to be successful?

I have some theories, but I suppose it might help to introduce myself. I'm a program manager at Microsoft, currently working on ISV (”independent software vendor”) programs (as in “offerings“, not as in “software programs“). I've been at Microsoft for almost four years, mostly doing marketing (Wait! Don't leave yet! I'm not doing marketing these days - please don't hold it against me!); before that I worked as a programmer and in other technical roles at a number of independent software vendors, including Asymetrix (now Click2learn), CenterLine, and Lotus. My early career was competing with Microsoft when I was working at Lotus, and spent a whole bunch of time working on Unix (Centerline made Unix C and C++ compilers and interpreters). So I hope I have, at the very least, some empathy for our ISV community, and all of the reasons they might love and fear Microsoft simultaneously.

Okay, so for those of you still reading (Hi Dad! Are you the only one?), here's where we're at: we have a bunch of things we give ISVs, including free or heavily-subsidized training, MSDN subscriptions, the MSDN website, the Microsoft Partner Program, the opportunity to list their solutions in catalogs (like the Windows Catalog at www.microsoft.com/windows/catalog), and logo programs (such as the “Designed for Windows XP” program).

What else should we be providing?