Next month sees the launch of two key products. Why not invite your customers to these events:
Performance Point Server
Performance Management is a real area of interest for our customers, and Performance Point builds on the BI work we have done around SQL Server to help provide customers with a platform to make business decisions, analyse their organisations and produce business Scorecards.
The Event takes place on the 16th of October in London, aimed at a Business Decision Maker Audience and will include a presentation from Robert Kaplan
If your customers want to attend, please follow the following link: http://www.microsoft.com/uk/office/ppslaunch/default.mspx
Office Communications Server
Office Communications Server facilitates the convergence of phone, email, fax, IM, web conferencing and voice over IP. We also have two great customer references, Tayside Fire and Rescue (Video) who will be presenting on the day and United Bristol Health Care Trust. It makes the messaging very relevant for our customer base.
The Event takes place on the 17th of October in London and there are two streams, one for IT Decision Makers, the other for Business Decision Makers:
Technical Decision Maker invite: http://www.microsoft.com/uk/office/ocs/itdm/default.mspx
Business Decision Maker invite: http://www.microsoft.com/uk/office/ocs/bdm/default.mspx
Both these launches present a great opportunity for us to introduce our customers to new, exciting, relevant technologies.
If there is one thing that is going down well right across education, it is SharePoint and the Microsoft Learning Gateway. In schools, colleges and universities, it has become the next major IT project for many customers - one that requires the right amount of planning and preparation, and good change management preparation.
So you may be interested in turning that into a services opportunity for your business.
Our Microsoft SharePoint Deployment Planning Services (SDPS) is a way of engaging customers directly, and for them to use their Software Assurance training vouchers to pay you for the work. As you'd expect, there are a few pre-requisites but nothing a SharePoint expert partner wouldn't have anyway. You can then get SDPS training, which includes:
SDPS training is designed to prepare your consultants to pass the certification exam required for this exciting new program. Depending on their level of deployment planning experience, this can be used as a great refresher or to get them started. To deliver SharePoint Deployment Planning Services, your consultants must pass the test and get certified.
Once your consultants pass one or both of the the Microsoft Learning certification exams and get certified, your company will be eligible to update your registration with the Microsoft Partner Program and highlight your solution in the Office System Solution Directory (OSSD). Your company will be displayed on the list of Packaged Service Providers.
Once you are certified and registered, you will be eligible to be paid by Microsoft to deliver a qualifying SharePoint deployment plan to your customers through on-site consulting sessions. The length of these sessions can vary depending on the Software Assurance agreement signed by the customer. Customers may be eligible to receive either a one, three, five, ten or fifteen-day on-site deployment solution session.Customers also have the opportunity to increase the length of their SharePoint Deployment Planning Service engagement—up to a 15-day consulting session—by converting some of the training vouchers they've earned through the Software Assurance program.
We've just published a new Windows Vista brochure specifically for schools, which provides a good overview of the reasons for using Windows Vista, and the way that it can support teaching and learning in schools. Think about what you've heard about Windows Vista so far. I bet most of it has been about what to do with it in business, or as a consumer. But how does it work in the classroom? That's what this documents sets out, and also describes how it can help the ICT teams in school to run ICT more seamlessly.
If you want printed copies, drop me an email using the link above.
On Monday 17th September, we ran another of our regular Education Strategy Days - an opportunity for partners to hear about our plans in the education sector, get demonstrations of latest product releases for education, and to chat with the Microsoft Education team and other partners. Product demonstrations included more on Learning Gateway 2007, the new publishing tool codename Grava, Windows Live @ Edu hosted email for colleges and universities, and the Live Meeting system.
Around 70 partners attended, and overall the day was valued by partners as a chance to catch up.
A couple of comments from the feedback form demonstrate the potential business value of the day:
"This was a great opportunity to consolidate our knowledge and understand more about the possibilities of our Microsoft Alliance" "Very good presentation overall. I have a number of education customers I will be going back to with what I have learned today"
"This was a great opportunity to consolidate our knowledge and understand more about the possibilities of our Microsoft Alliance"
"Very good presentation overall. I have a number of education customers I will be going back to with what I have learned today"
I've put all of the slides onto our SkyDrive:
If you just want some individual presentations, select them from below:
Shift Happens - from the UK Schools blog
Firstly, what’s it all about? Well, as I’m sure you are aware, 2008 represents a huge opportunity for you, as Microsoft Partners. With the launch of Windows Server 2008, and subsequently, Windows Server Virtualisation, combined with a number of products from the System Center family, there has never been a better time to embrace the Microsoft core platform. This daylong session represents your chance to become familiar with the new technologies, along with current ones, to ensure you can provide your customers with a solid foundation now, ready for the future. With a mixture of presentations, open discussion demonstrations, you’ll leave with a strong idea of the Microsoft core platform, and how the different parts fit together to drive a compelling message to your customers, and inevitably, drive revenue. In the morning, we’ll be covering a number of Windows Server 2008 technologies, including Read Only Domain Controllers, Network Access Protection, Server Core, Terminal Services, Clustering and Deployment. We’ll be dedicating the whole afternoon to Virtualisation in which we’ll be covering both current, and future technologies, including Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, System Center Operations Manager, Data Protection Manager and Windows Server virtualisation.
The events will take place on the following dates. You will need to be signed in to the Partner website to access the details.
· 11th October 2007 – Regus Building, Thames Valley Park, Reading
· 19th November 2007 - Regus Building, Thames Valley Park, Reading
· 3rd December 2007 – Microsoft Office, Edinburgh
· 15th January 2008 – Microsoft Campus, Thames Valley Park, Reading
If you have any trouble accessing the pages using the links above, simply visit the Partner Learning Centre, https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/home.aspx, and enter 44SE011 in the keyword search. You should see all 4 events listed.
The agenda for the events is as follows – I know it’s an early start, but there is so much we want to show you, we couldn’t have it any other way! J
Agenda:8:30am – Registration / Breakfast9:00am – Introduction & Welcome – Presenters’ Intro, Integrated Story Outline, Agenda, Opportunity for Partners9:30am – Top 10 Benefits, What we won’t be covering...
KMS, Windows Server Deployment Solution Accelerator & Windows Deployment Services, Read Only Domain Controllers, Network Access Protection
10:45am - Break11:00am - Server Core, Clustering & High Availability, Terminal Services, IIS 7.012:30pm - Lunch1:15pm - Introduction & Virtualisation from the Desktop to the Datacenter (today and futures), Virtualisation Architecture2:15pm - System Center Virtual Machine Manager: Interface & Functionality2:45pm - Break3:00pm - System Center Virtual Machine Manager: Self-Service Portal4:00pm - Windows Server Virtualisation4:45pm - Q&A5:00pm - Close
The dress code will be business casual.
If you have any questions around the event, please don’t hesitate to email matt.mcspirit@microsoft.com, and we’ll look forward to seeing you at the events!
I work for Microsoft and I still find our licensing confusing and complex! There are plans to simplifying academic licensing, but they'll take a little time to appear. In the meantime we've got some training coming up to try and help clear up some of the confusion and explain the different licensing programmes and where they fit within Education. We've also been asked by partners about working with the Large Account Resellers and how that might work. As you'll see from the agenda below we're trying to address these questions as well. Here are the full details including how to register:
Due to popular demand from our Education partners Microsoft is hosting an Academic Licensing event on 8 November. Join us to find out more about the following .....
Target Audience
The aim of the event is to provide partners with an introduction to Academic Licensing and an opportunity to meet and begin building relationships with experienced Licensing Resellers in the Education sector.
Morning
Presentations on a range of licensing topics including
· Academic Licensing background and best practice guidelines (including engagement models, resources and support available to partners)
· Fundamentals of Licensing and Academic Licensing programmes
· SPLA (Services Provider Licence Agreement) and hosted solutions
· Software Asset Management and Anti-Piracy
Afternoon
Structured Breakout Sessions and Networking
You will have the chance to meet and network with selected Microsoft EdLARs (Education Large Account Resellers), Academic SPLA Resellers, Distributors and Microsoft Licensing Specialists. There will also be a breakout session for ISV partners who want to find out more about the Royalty Licensing programme.
*Please note the final agenda is still to be fully confirmed.*
Venue and Timings
8 November from 8.30 am (arrivals and registration) for a 9 am start and 3.30 pm close.
‘Everest I & II’
Microsoft CampusThames Valley Park – Building 3RG6 1WG ReadingBerkshireUK
Registration
To accept this invitation please register by confirming your full name, email address, contact number and partner name to t-bhavm@microsoft.com
My colleague Michael Royster, in Microsoft Consulting Services, has just finished a briefing document on the approaches available to implementation, addressing the questions about thin client versus rich client, and provides excellent advice and insight into how you can plan for the most appropriate blend. The title, "Application Deployment Architectures - The 'Rich' versus 'Thin' debate and beyond" is a pretty good description of what it is all about, but to clarify a little more, here's a couple of extracts from the summary:
"Today, there is no “one-size-fits-all” answer. Different applications have different characteristics which may make them more suited to the traditional rich client deployment model, while others may be more suited to a server based computing model. Many organisations are beginning to deploy a hybrid of traditional rich client with a server based computing model (and in some cases, application virtualisation where this is appropriate). The impact on the productivity of the end users or their learning experience must be central to the decision of an application deployment strategy. Graphics and media have become more widely used and the Web has led people to expect easy interaction with software. These rich graphical multi-media applications are particularly suited to the traditional rich client deployment model. Some industry analysts are now predicting that the pendulum is now moving again towards the rich client. Whether the appropriate deployment model is rich client, server based (thin client), or application streaming, Microsoft has a breadth of integrated products across the spectrum of deployment architectures."
"Today, there is no “one-size-fits-all” answer. Different applications have different characteristics which may make them more suited to the traditional rich client deployment model, while others may be more suited to a server based computing model. Many organisations are beginning to deploy a hybrid of traditional rich client with a server based computing model (and in some cases, application virtualisation where this is appropriate).
The impact on the productivity of the end users or their learning experience must be central to the decision of an application deployment strategy. Graphics and media have become more widely used and the Web has led people to expect easy interaction with software. These rich graphical multi-media applications are particularly suited to the traditional rich client deployment model. Some industry analysts are now predicting that the pendulum is now moving again towards the rich client.
Whether the appropriate deployment model is rich client, server based (thin client), or application streaming, Microsoft has a breadth of integrated products across the spectrum of deployment architectures."
If you want to understand what the different Microsoft solutions are, then this is a really good starting point, with succinct and clear chapters on:
And Michael's included UK & International case studies, within and outside of education, of different implementations. The document is freely available on our download site, and you can pass the link or the document on to any relevant customers.
Download the guide here
Michael has also created a PowerPoint presentation, which will help if you are talking with customers about their options.
One of the most common questions asked about SharePoint is 'how does it support accessibility standards'. We've not had a great story. We all know that SharePoint can be customised, but it takes a lot of effort, especially when having to develop against accessibility requirements. The good news is that this is about to become a lot easier with the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint.
About a month ago on July 31st, HiSoftware issued a press release, announcing an agreement with Microsoft to develop the Accessibility Kit for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. The kit will provide templates, master pages, controls and Web parts along with technical documentation to advance the accessibility of MOSS based web sites and applications for people with disabilities, especially those who are vision impaired. All of the source code will be provided via the Microsoft Permissive License and will be available on CodePlex and/or another (more accessible) web site later this year for customers and other Microsoft partners to download, reuse, and extend.
More details can be found at: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/09/05/pre-announcing-the-accessibility-kit-for-sharepoint-aks.aspx
The release dates are as follows:
If you have an urgent need to get the kit before Oct 29, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
For those of you that don't know Matt Fox in the Education Partner Group is 'Mr BSF' for partners. He's asked me to remind you that the Guides are available to partners on request.
Building Schools for the Future (BSF) represents a fundamental ambition to dramatically improve teaching and learning within schools and to secure our future in the global, post-industrial, knowledge-age economy. BSF is not just about buildings. It is about transforming learning. BSF has to be about realising the potential of every young person and improving their life chances.
In order to support our partners in stepping up to this challenge, Microsoft has invested in a series of BSF Guides and the overview of these 3 documents is available to download here. Our joint engagement is essential to making this programme a sccess. Please make contact with our BSF team via mfox@microsoft.com in order to understand the depth of investment we have made to date and how we can support your efforts in this market.