Where did December go?  It was here, then… poof it was gone!

I had the opportunity earlier in the month to meet with our Managed ISVs via roundtables in DC and Chicago.  We’d received fantastic ratings from our partners in the most recent survey.  My primary interest was to get their feedback on how we could further fine tune our value-add as an Evangelism organization.  We also had plenty to talk about with the Azure news at the recent Professional Developers Conference, the beta release of Visual Studio 2010, and the beta release of SharePoint 2010.  No shortage of technology here…

I also had a significant exec review this month as part of a team looking to advance our joint sales execution with Managed ISVs.  The roundtables provided a good external sounding board, validating some of our internal conclusions and encouraging us to think globally (a trap I sometimes fall in by running a US-specific organization). The recommendations were received favorably and our scope was actually expanded.  Delivering on those ideas will take significant cycles in the next quarter.

We have our annual mid-year review in January where we report out on the state of the business and make adjustments to maximize our scorecard results. We are in great shape this year, particularly in comparison with last year.  There are still several key areas we need to hunker down to achieve, but all in all, I feel great about where we are.

One key area we’ll dial up on is WebsiteSpark (for Custom Application Web Developers).  It follows in the footsteps of the very successful BizSpark program (for Startups).  It also provides licenses for development tools and servers, but also provides a direct way to connect with customers (via the Partner Catalog).  It is off to a good start, but has a ways to go to reach the levels of BizSpark (>25,000 members).

To our BizSpark startup partners, I wish you the very best via our official BizSpark greeting card :)