Alvin Gendrano's WebLog

In Bangalore This Week

AlvinG — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 09:39:30 GMT

I am in Bangalore this week to visit our lnternational-English delivery site. It is an impressive operation with over 150 specialists, and partner technical consultants serving thousands of partners world-wide. This week caps a very busy and productive...(read more)

Yet Another New Blogger on the team!

AlvinG — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:56:13 GMT

We have another member of the ISV Advisory Services team blogging about technology. http://blogs.msdn.com/amitava/default.aspx Amitava leads a team of our engineers in providing services to help partners attain Windows Vista Logo certification. With the...(read more)

Worldwide Partner Conference 2007 in Denver, CO

AlvinG — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:17:02 GMT

We're at the Worldwide Partner conference this week in Denver, marking the third consecutive year our group has participated. For me, it's always great to interact with our ISV partners on what they find most important and to share with them the benefits...(read more)

New Office-Technologies Blogger on the Team

AlvinG — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 21:19:00 GMT

I am always excited to get e-mail like this: The Office TFA Team has its first blogger. Congratulations Pranab and Happy blogging!!! J http://blogs.msdn.com/pranab/ Thanks and have a great day. Kind regards, Vinod Venugopal | Technical Lead | Microsoft...(read more)

June 12 is Philippine Independence Day

AlvinG — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:42:00 GMT

Hoisting the Philippine Flag up on the blog site to commemorate Philippine Independence. Flag image courtesy of Anton Diaz ( http://www.anton.blogs.com/ ) On Friday (June 15), the MS Filipino Diversity Action commitee will hold an Independence Day social...(read more)

Townhall Meeting Today

AlvinG — Tue, 15 May 2007 19:34:00 GMT

Today marks an important milestone in my career at Microsoft. I finally get to attend one of Steve Ballmer's Townhall meetings in person . In prior years, I have religiously attended these important meetings remotely through webcasts. Having spent the...(read more)

Now in Seattle

AlvinG — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 19:22:09 GMT

After 8+ years at Microsoft, we are finally at Corporate Headquarters (eg. The Mothership). Interestingly, we have moved here to do the same jobs. It's been a productive 4 weeks, but admittedly, the first two weeks were very dreary because of the rain....(read more)

Offsite Location

AlvinG — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 09:06:24 GMT

In case you were wondering where we were having our offsite (Victoria, BC): Victoria, BC...(read more)

Global Partner Support Offsite

AlvinG — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 09:01:00 GMT

I'm 30,000 feet above the Midwestern United States traveling to Seattle for a leadership offsite with my Global Partner Support colleagues. Together, we deliver support and services benefits for partners through the Microsoft Partner Program (MSPP) which...(read more)

Back!!!

AlvinG — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 10:15:33 GMT

I've been wanting to jump back into the community scene for quite a while, and it might as well be tonight. It has been crazy busy lately with normal ISV-Advisory-Services operations and the neat collaborative projects we have in the works. In the last...(read more)

Potential Application Compatibility Gotchas in Windows Vista

AlvinG — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 05:13:00 GMT

With the imminent (Release to Manufacturing) RTM of Windows Vista at the end of 2006, it is prudent for software vendors and enthusiasts to start testing their applications for compatibility with the new OS. Microsoft has released a whitepaper highlighting...(read more)

Great time to be a Microsoft ISV Partner

AlvinG — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 06:58:00 GMT

I'm amazed every time I think about the great benefits and programs now available to Microsoft Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partners and I believe that now's the best time to be a breadth ISV on the Microsoft platform. These benefits and programs...(read more)

About Me

AlvinG — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 06:32:00 GMT

I manage the global delivery of a Microsoft Partner Program benefit for Independent Software Vendors (ISV) called ISV Advisory Services. It is a very exciting technical enablement benefit that was launched in 2005 (press release). At its core, the benefit is designed to help software vendors create compelling solutions on the Microsoft platform by providing ISV's with 10 to 20 hours of advisory services per year. To serve thousands of ISVs worldwide, we have hired a talented and growing group of 50 developer advisors in the US, India, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, China, Korea, Spain, Argentina, and, Italy to provide proactive services such as:

Customized 1:1 Technology Workshops on the latest Microsoft developer technologies like:

SQL2005
Visual Studio 2005
Visual Studio Team System
ASP.NET 2.0
etc.

Provision of Code Samples

Legacy to .NET Migration Best Practices

SQL2005 Migration Guidance
Application Certification Guidance
Architecture/Design Guidance Sessions

To-date, our global team has served over 3,000 ISVs and has delivered over 35,000 hours of developer guidance. To learn more about the benefit, send an e-mail to isvhelp@microsoft.com.

Hello World!

AlvinG — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 05:49:00 GMT

Well, I finally jumped into the blogosphere despite years of succesfully convincing myself that I did not have the time for this. Fortunately, or not, blogging has caught up with me thanks to two events in January that were just too much of a coincidence to ignore:

One of my team members (Joe Scalone) highlighted how other managers at Microsoft were blogging, and asked me to do the same
My Management Strategy MBA class had a semester-long requirement to maintain a blog

And so, as the saying goes, I decided to hit two birds with the same blog.