This is our new concept to help partners who prefer evening training options - we often find when we talk to our SBSC community, smaller Certified and Gold partners and many registered partners that the way you run your businesses makes it hard to take...

We are pleased to announce a brand-new training course specifically designed for Registered Members launching this week! Titled “ Making the Most of Your Registered Partner Membership ” , t he course highlights the key tools and resources Registered Partners...

On this website: http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/resources.mspx - there are many many resources for customers and partners to leverage and the list has grown enormously since I last looked. Blogs, webcasts, whitepapers - and much more.

This is a great video interview of one of our Gold ISVs - Dataract. Craig talks about his journey to being a Gold partner, the history of their company in terms of platform and business strategy and looks forward to the future. Links: www.dataract.com...

For many partners who manage customers' infrastructure you will hopefully be already sorted on this important patching exercise but if not please go here for more information: http://www.microsoft.com.au/daylightsaving It should also provide some business...

http://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?ln=en-au&prid=11274&gprid=500921

We've just announced this - exciting stuff - here is the announcement from Angus Logan: "We just announced @ dev.live.com Windows Live have partnered with the top SNs around the world to provide consumers a safe way to invite their friends from Windows...

Microsoft Partner Readiness Training - 2-day - Let's Talk about MOSS - Level 200. Instructors: Ivan Wilson (MVP) presenting Brisbane & Melbourne. Mick Badran (MVP) presenting Sydney. Register NOW: https://www.local.microsoft.com.au/australia/events...

This article did the rounds at work - it is a good read and we felt had a nice 'IO' type flavour: http://mobile2.wsj.com/device/html_article.php?id=1&CALL_URL=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB120467900166211989.html%3F

This is great news for partners and customers ! http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/03/18/windows-vista-sp1-released-to-windows-update.aspx

Via ARN : "For the third year in a row, business intelligence (BI) applications have been ranked the top technology priority in the 2008 Gartner Executive Programs survey of 1500 chief information officers (CIOs). According to Gartner, this is because...

From an email intended for partners I was sent: " DON’T MISS THE AWARDS SUBMISSION PERIOD! The submission period for the 2008 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Awards will very soon be drawing to a close. We hope that you are planning to nominate...

Pip Marlow's successor (and my new boss) has been announced :Paul Voges, previously the Director of the Services business here. We managed to get him immediately for an introductory interview on Partner TV: www.partnertv.com.au (direct link here ) We...

http://blogs.technet.com/EssentialBusinessServer/ This compliments nicely our own local SBS and Essential Business Server blog from Robbie Upcroft: http://blogs.technet.com/sbsaustralia/

(Via Christian ) Australian Trade Delegation to Microsoft: Gain early access to MS’s strategic vision for the financial services industry About this mission: Be part of the first-ever delegation of Australian financial services technology and solutions...

Whilst not directly involving our partner channel, I think this is something you should all be aware of, posted up by our local government affairs team http://blogs.msdn.com/augovtaffairs/archive/2008/03/11/cyber-weapon-in-the-fight-against-child-predators...

Nice idea - using the new Silverlight 2 'Deep Zoom' feature on the Silvierlight developer reference ( good spot ) http://joestegman.members.winisp.net/DeepZoom/ (yes - all one picture - Deep deep deep zoom !!)

For partners with designers in their companies, this will be a useful summary of all the news coming out of Mix: http://ux.artu.tv/?page_id=51

Christian has posted a great guide, linking to the MIX08 sessions as well, for web dev and design organisations looking to get involved in the Microsoft partner program. See here: http://blogs.msdn.com/chlong/archive/2008/03/10/summary-of-the-partner...

http://blogs.msdn.com/ozpartnertv/archive/2008/02/28/partner-tv-telephone-pre-sales-technical-support.aspx TPTS is our telephone based pre-sales technical support service, available to all Gold and Certified partners for free (and unlimited calls). Find...

For Aussie partners, the second of these sessions is around lunchtime local time so definitely worth investigating. WNS31PAL: Virtualization: Selling to the TDM Presented by Eddie Hanif; Dai Vu Two Live Presentations! Tuesday, March 25, 2008 8:00-9:00am...

New Improved! Right License, Right Customer & Licensing the Big Ten (Now including Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008!) Melbourne – April 28, 2008 Adelaide – May 19, 2008 This course is aimed at resellers, distributors and...

We often hear from partners that you are too busy to do substantial training in the business day as you are focussed on looking after your customers, so my team has put together a new concept which adds to our existing training schedule, but is focussed...

Our MIX08 event is in progress in Las Vegas and significant announcements are pouring out. To keep abreast of them here are some resources I am using: The official MIX website: http://visitmix.com/2008/default.aspx (includes an RSS feed) Example - day...

This could be a great opportunity for partners to have some fun, and raise some publicity for your businesses - read on ! i-mate Australia is running an online experience to help launch their new Ultimate range and provide a comprehensive view of the...