Lots of notes & noise swirling around today after the Professional Developers Conference announcement of Windows Azure , Microsoft's platform for cloud computing and software + services. As you can imagine the wraps on this were kept tighter than...

Good announcement from Prime Minister Rudd on Friday about the Government's plans for helping small businesses cope with the credit crisis. A snippet from the Sydney Morning Herald's MySmallBusiness blog: Addressing a business summit in Brisbane today...

Good read from one of my feeds about the importance of looking at your existing customer base as a source of future revenue. A snippet: Seeing your customers as members of a kind of quasi-R&D team can save you a good deal of time and money and has...

What is the purpose of this alert? Microsoft is scheduled to release a security bulletin (out-of-band) to address a vulnerability in all currently supported versions of Windows. The software update will be available for download from the Microsoft Update...

Just received word that the exclusive SBSC Toolkit shipping with the October Action Pack will include 15 additional CALs for SBS & EBS. Nice. The kits will be at the Microsoft post office from October 24th & so should be with you a few weeks after...

Can you spot the difference? * Solid article from today's Sydney Morning Herald that highlights our growing efforts around stamping out software piracy. Snippet: Microsoft this month commenced legal action in the Federal Magistrates Court against three...

Following on from my earlier post on our proactive campaign to help customers succeed in a tough economy, please find below a video address that Paul Voges recorded earlier today for the attention of all Microsoft Australian partners (Paul is the Director...

Good read from the American Express OPEN business forum around the importance of building your strategic network. Snippet: You can easily and logically develop joint marketing initiatives with one or more partners and share the costs of promotion while...

Hard times. Nervous times. Companies losing confidence & the economy in turmoil. What to do? There's a very strong argument that says organisations should pull back, consolidate, stop spending and just ride out the storm. And that absolutely makes...

With thanks to Christian Long from our ISV team: Register now for the Microsoft Innovation Days roadshow in November. This is your opportunity to 'get your feet on the ground, head in the clouds' and connect with top IT architects, developers and partners...

Great article from one of my feeds that's more relevant today than ever. With basically the whole world in financial panic mode & small businesses looking to cut corners wherever possible, there's a temptation as suppliers to lower prices in order...

Not sure how many partners in Australia use this complimentary online technical support service but it could be worth a look. Not the be all to end all of technical support, but another tool in your armoury. Open to MAPS subscribers only, questions will...

See guest post #1 here. Thanks, Robbie As the Australian SBS User Groups are changing focus, direction and names into the SMB IT Professionals groups, we need to ensure that we're not only changing our names, but living up to them. Microsoft has really...

We're in serious feedback gathering mode at moment & my colleague Vaughn Gourlie in the partner website team is looking for your input. It'd be great if you can spare a few minutes to let us know the top 5 things you go to the Partner Portal to do...