I'd like to take this chance to wish all our partners happy christmas and a humming new year in terms of business ! For us the excitement continues with the General Availability launch (GA) in January - watch this space for info about how partners can...

http://blogs.msdn.com/kn/ "We are announcing a change to the distribution and support model for KN. Our new plan is to release KN as a Technical Preview rather than as a supported product feature of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. As a Technical...

http://www.microsoft.com/about/mspreview/en/us/abouthomepage.mspx Shows off the scalability of MOSS plus of course the creative freedom you get versus Content Management Server. And of course, please do check out the new website:

We've just announced enhancements to the benefits associated with the Security Software Advisor (SSA) program. My team will be leading the building of this initiative with our partners in Australia over the next few months, so watch this space for more...

If you are a Small Business Specialist you'll no doubt know that Bill Vlandis, who did such a great job building the community and delivering value to the program, left us recently to join the corporate HQ. Well I am pleased to say we have finalised on...

This came in from the US today - a great summary of training resources for partners to learn the next level of details on IO. Note resources such as MSPTR.com are only for Gold partners, but the online training is available to all. Remember to always...

Amongst others, two very interesting and unconnected announcements were made this week: 1. Introducing HP & Microsoft Solutions for the People-Ready Business " REDMOND, Wash. — Dec. 13, 2006 — Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq “MSFT”) and HP (NYSE “HPQ,” Nasdaq...

This went live a few weeks ago - it's the customer-facing campaign website for optimising infrastructure, and as with almost all of our customer-facing marketing, there is a 'find a partner' call to action (see the right hand side): http://www.microsoft...

Via Mary Jo: "Microsoft developers, start your engines. The 2007 Professional Developers Conference is now booked for October 2 through 5 in Los Angeles. Expect Longhorn Server and Visual Studio "Orcas" to be the stars of the show, this time around. You...

There are some amazing things continually happening on the VE platform, typically surfacing in local.live.com of course. Keep an eye on the VE blog for the latest. How about this shot of the Leaning Tower of Pisa for example, delivered via the Birds Eye...

A few days old this, but still worth highlighting: " REDMOND, Wash. — Dec. 5, 2006 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the release of the first community technology preview (CTP) for its integrated performance management application Microsoft ® Office PerformancePoint...

If you attended any of the partner roadshows recently then you will have heard of the newly launched EVO site : the one stop hub for all things for partners to do with Vista, Office and Exchange. Training links, beta downloads, resources to help you sell...

There are some interesting new specialisations slated for launch within the partner program, and for some of them we have launched initiatives to help you get ready in advance of their launch. For fast moving partners this will give you competitive advantage...

An email went round today and it prompted me to remind everyone - all Gold and Certified partners can get 40% off MS Press books. Just contact Woodslane, our distributor, and they will tell you how.

Via Angus : Jeff Alexander has posted a great item on showing you how the new search folders feature works on Vista - it's just awesome by the way. Already I couldn't live without it :-) http://blogs.technet.com/jeffa36/archive/2006/12/11/windows-vista...

Via Mark: LloydsTSB - www.shareview.co.uk - built by Conchango Corgi - www.trustcorgi.com - built by ArtemisCorp Great to see real life examples going live....

As readers will know, I use Windows Live Writer (WLW) to post entries to my blog, as do many people. On the WLW team blog they have just announced a new build with some nice new features: "This update to Windows Live Writer 1.0 (Beta) features: Tagging...

Most of the technical people know this already but for sales and marketing partner representatives I think it's useful to reinforce the fact that Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 provides a new blogging platform built in. Some example sites: · http://www...

I'll say it again, MSPTR.com is an amazing and yet underutilised resource. Here is the latest update of content on there for Gold partners (it is an exclusive benefit for Gold partners and not available to certified or registered). " The Early Sessions...

Via Mark Harrison: "Currently free ... Clinic 5046: Inside Look at Building and Developing Solutions with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 "

We recently announced this new initiative at the partner roadshows (whihc finish with Canberra this Thursday). A US$30m worldwide investment in helping partners raise their levels of staff certification and associated capaiblity: "Partner Skills Plus...

I like this, from James Senior http://blogs.technet.com/james/archive/2006/12/01/if-microsoft-was-a-bank.aspx

As we see the uptake of Office 2007 grow now the products have RTM'd it's possible some people will send files in the new file formats to those who don't have the 2007 versions installed. Never fear - we have a cunning plan. You can install the "Microsoft...

This new solution (add on to MOSS 2007) for finding people in an organisation truly fascinates me, so today I finally installed the beta clilent (unfortunately not publically available yet as far as I can tell - more info on this topic on the KN Blog...