The new Developer marketing boy. : Marketing

Receive kudos for being you

chlong — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:40:33 GMT

I’m sure you’ve heard this via the normal channels… the Worldwide Partner Conference is open for award submissions from tomorrow.

Nominate your Solution for a 2009 Microsoft Global Award!
The Awards program is designed to recognize your innovative solutions built on Microsoft technologies. Successful partners in the Awards program will benefit from:

Recognition- be recognised in front of your peers and customers, along with photo opportunities with Microsoft Executives – woohoo – seriously though, this is great for PR and for your desk at work
Customised Promotions- receive personalised logos, web banners, and custom PR identifying you as an elite Microsoft Partner.
Exclusive Access- take advantage of an opportunity to meet with Microsoft executives at an award winner’s luncheon.

How do I do submit something?
Take this unique opportunity to showcase your innovative solutions. You can enter for an award using a web-based tool, between February 17th and April 2nd, 2009. The entry tool and detailed information about the 2009 Awards program can be found here. Winners and finalists will be announced on June 15th, and Partner of the Year awards will be presented to winning partners at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.

Save the Date: July 13–16, 2009, Worldwide Partner Conference
Microsoft is pleased to announce that the Worldwide Partner Conference 2009 will take place in New Orleans, on July 13–16, 2009. Registration Opens in March (details will be coming soon).

Find full details of the Worldwide Partner Conference here.

I’m sure Sarah Arnold will be publishing some more info soon and there’s always our local Australia Partner Conference to look forward too.

Innovate On Site Re-Launched

chlong — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:19:36 GMT

The new version of InnovateOn site has been launched with many new features:

Streamlined registration
The new registration engine significantly reduces the time required for a new partner to enrol
Multiple technology enrolment
Users can register a solution once and choose multiple Microsoft technologies that are being used in the solution.
Improved navigation
The new site has a simplified primary navigation and site layout to make it easier for users to access the information they need.
Solution-focused visual search
Innovate On now has a Silverlight-based visual search feature that allows users to find relevant Microsoft resources for their solution, based on the technologies used, the audience, and the phase of the solution lifecycle the solution is currently in.
Better access to benefits
A new benefits widget allows users to easily access all of their benefits from a single location.
New data-driven architecture
Innovate On was rebuilt from the ground up to provide a solid, secure, and flexible platform that will allows us to improve content management and add additional features over time.

So what does that mean for you?

So if you are developing using one of these technologies there are benefits to help you launch your product into market:

as well as:

Centralized Resources for Solution Development We’ve compiled the resources you need to build, test, and market your solution within one central resource, the Innovate On Web site. Resources include links to testing tools, developer SDKs, technical forums, online training, and much more.
Access to Market Research These reports, compiled by leading market research firms, are available at no charge to members of the Microsoft Partner Program. This is valuable information you can use to identify specific needs of your current clients or prospects.
Certified Logo Program When your application passes independent testing, you receive a distinctive logo that offers proof of technical excellence to your customers.
Sales and Marketing Support Receive prominent placement in Microsoft directories, discounts on search advertising, inclusion in product launch activities, and more.

Visit the site at http://www.innovateon.com/.

Complimentary Market Research for ISV's

chlong — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 02:23:46 GMT

MarketingSherpa Offer has been Extended

If you are a Certified or a Gold Certified Partner with the ISV Competency, get the best marketing research available today. Receive best practices from other software marketing professionals in order to create impactful marketing programs. This complimentary, one-year online membership (US$597 value) to MarketingSherpa market research is being extended until January 31, 2008.

Each partner is able to get three FREE memberships for their marketing team.

Visit the MarketingSherpa page on the Microsoft Partner Program Web site to sign up.

Win an AIMIA Award

chlong — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 06:17:35 GMT

Nominations for the 14th Annual AIMIA Awards, the longest running and most prestigious awards in Australia’s interactive media industry, will be closing Friday 9th November 2007!

There are plenty of Awards Categories to choose from, so click here to start your entry:

Best Advertising or Marketing
Best Children’s
Best Classifieds
Best Corporate or Business-to-Business
Best Cross-Platform Content or Content Integration
Best Cultural, Lifestyle or Sport
Best Integration with an Offline Advertising Campaign
Best Interactive TV
Best Emerging Exporter
Best Entertainment
Best Financial Service
Best Learning & Education
Best Mobile Advertising or Marketing
Best Mobile Product or Service
Best News, Media or Reference
Best Non-profit or Government
Best Online Retail
Best Science, Health or Environment
Best Student Developed Content
Best Tourism or Travel
Best Word-of-mouth, Peer-to-peer or Viral
Effectiveness Award
Best of the Best Award
Outstanding Contribution Award

Entries for the Awards are open from Tuesday 2nd October to Friday 9th November 2007, and all AIMIA Business, Associate and Corporate members are eligible to enter. Student members can enter their projects into the Best Student Developed Content category, and all members are invited to nominate an individual for the Outstanding Contribution Award.

Winners of the 14th AIMIA Awards will be announced and celebrated at the Digital Content Industry’s Night of Night’s, a glitzy ceremony bringing together over 650 industry leaders in Sydney on Friday 7th March, 2008.

Be a real winner in interactive innovation. and visit www.aimia.com.au/awards for more details and to begin your entry!

Technorati Tags: AIMIA, Microsoft Partners

Looking for ISV Visual Studio 2008 Partners...

chlong — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 05:55:00 GMT

...for a potential case study.

Please get in touch if you are an ISV (a partner who is developing using Visual Studio 2008) who:

is based in Australia
is using Visual Studio 2008 in an interesting or topical way
has been using Visual Studio 2008 for a while
has some tangible results (e.g. amount of time saved) in using the new platform
is happy to share your experiences

If you think you all of the above describes you, please send me an email.

Thanks.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Partners, Microsoft Australia, Partners, Visual Studio

October Training Update

chlong — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:49:19 GMT

Want to ready yourself? Want to increase your profitability?

Visit the Training & Readiness Centre which aims at providing our partners with valuable sales and technical learning resources for Technical, Sales & Marketing people to:

Improve your knowledge of Microsoft’s industry-leading solutions
Meet your customer’s needs more effectively and
Increase their - and your - profitability

Sounds good? The Training for October includes:

Windows Server 2008: IT Pro

This 2 day Windows Server 2008 Essentials is intended for IT professionals and partners currently experienced on the technologies included in Windows Server 2000 and Windows Server 2003. The course will focus on and discuss the following product scenarios and technologies: Centralized Application Access, Branch Office, Security & Policy Enforcement and Server Management. >>Register now!

Windows Server 2008: Developer

This two-day technical readiness event is designed to introduce developers to many of the new features of Windows Server 2008. As Microsoft prepares to release the most advanced version of their server platform ever, now is the time to start learning how to use many of the great enhancements in the applications you write and deploy. Learn how Windows Server 2008 provides a compelling application foundation and makes huge leaps forward in the area of Microsoft’s DSI (Distributed Systems Initiative) and DFO (Design for Operations). >>Register now!

MOSS: Developer Intensive

This four day course explores the development opportunities made available with the 2007 Microsoft® Office system. You will learn how to extend the Microsoft Office system client applications and how to leverage the new Open File Formats by writing custom code that reads, modifies, and generates Office documents in client applications, as well as server-side components. You will learn how Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services V3 (WSS) plays a central role as an extensible platform for building sites-based business solutions. >>Register now!

Unified Communications & Exchange Server 2007

Unified Communications solutions reduce the complexities of modern communications into a seamless experience by combining e-mail, instant messaging, voice and video into a single, intuitive system. They enable businesses to replace conflicting systems with a single, unified communications platform that leverages their existing data and telecommunications infrastructure. With the launch of Exchange Server 2007, the 2007 Office system, and soon-to-release Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft offers a comprehensive set of technologies enabling IT departments to deliver more flexible and more secure communications with simplified infrastructure that streamlines management and reduces total cost of ownership. >>Register now!

Forefront & IAG

With Microsoft’s best-in-class Forefront Security products, you’re in control of the new customer opportunities awaiting you. During this course, you’ll learn how the Forefront line of products offers customers peace of mind at the edge, on their servers, and on every desktop. Training will provide depth technical information on: Intelligent Application Gateway (IAG) 2007 , Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2006, Forefront Security for Exchange , Forefront Security for SharePoint, Forefront Client Security. >>Register now!

BizTalk Release 2

There have been some very significant enhancements to the BizTalk platform in R2. This Jumpstart has been designed as a fast pace, intense workshop to take highly proficient Partners across the new features of BizTalk 2006 R2. The course will explore new functionality such as WF and WCF integration with BizTalk, but assumes some existing knowledge in these areas. The course also explores the new EDI and RFID technologies.
*This is a level 400 workshop and not suitable for those who are new to BizTalk Server.* >>Register now!

Effectively Generating and Converting Leads with Microsoft Infrastructure Optimisation (IO) Campaigns

This 1 day interactive workshop – targeted at Partners participating in any of the OSYCI, BPIO or APIO Campaigns – has as its outcomes:
- to provide an overview understanding of each Campaign
- to provide some relevant sales and marketing knowledge/skills/processes to assist Partners generate and convert leads relevant to each Campaign
- point Partners towards a range of resources to assist them to capitalise on the opportunity provided by each Campaign. >>Register now!

New Australia 2008 Wave Launch Blog

chlong — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 09:41:44 GMT

Nick Mayhew has created a new team blog for the 2008 Launch Wave, especially for Partners based in Australia: http://blogs.msdn.com/RideThe2008Wave/. Subscribe to receive the latest news, resources and case studies from around Microsoft Australia.

MarketingSherpa Offer for ISV's

chlong — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 08:50:00 GMT

We are offering our ISV/Software Solutions competency partners a complimentary, one-year subscription to MarketingSherpa. This renowned research firm specialises in all things marketing, from how to go about optimising your website for search, using video on your site etc. It's more than just advice on marketing strategies and tactics, as it offers practical proven data, along with the latest tips, trends, and techniques to help you effectively:

Plan your marketing strategy, budgeting, forecasting, and presentations
Access extensive research, marketing numbers, and statistics in an easy-to-search database.
Be inspired by reviewing successful campaigns
Find more than 2,100 creative samples from real-life marketing campaigns and tests, and read more than 700 case studies.
Train your team with extensive how-to instructions
See how it’s done with best practices on everything from sending e-mails to consumers to business-to-business lead-generation campaigns.

Partners can use this complimentary subscription to find out what works, what’s not working and the latest trends in marketing.This is a limited time offer on a first come first served basis for Certified and Gold Certified ISV Partners. If you are interested, please sign up by January 31, 2007.

Offer is for the Sales & Marketing roles within our ISV Competency Certified and Gold Certified partners
All content is in English – however research is gathered globally
One year MarketingSherpa online subscription
Partners Must Sign up by October 31, 2007 – the subscription will expire on January 31, 2009

If you are an Australian ISV in the Microsoft Partner Program, please send me an email for the registration access code to activate your membership today and start your next successful marketing campaign or visit the Partner Portal page: https://partner.microsoft.com/global/program/competencies/isvsolutions/40046052 (you'll need to sign in).

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Partners, MarketingSherpa

CNET Channel and Amazon Partnership

chlong — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 01:35:18 GMT

Two new partnerships were announced this week:

CNET Channel (the leading provider of product information to online retailers in North America, Western Europe and Australia) who will syndicate and promote "Certified for Windows Vista" and "Works with Windows Vista" hardware and software to the e-tail industry. This will make it easier for online retailers to integrate "Certified for Windows Vista" and "Works with Windows Vista" logos and messaging into their product pages.
This deal follows the market-leading logo implementation recently launched by Amazon.com.

I like this as it helps promote the Windows ecoystem and it helps partners sell product, especially if you provide solutions to the e-tail industry, through product differentiation + providing access to millions of online shoppers at the top e-tailers throughout North America, Western Europe and Australia.

The benefit to Retailers is of course to up/cross sell, drive customer sat and use free technical support! Watch this space to see which retailers sign up...

Technorati Tags: CNET Channel, Amazon, Certified for Windows Vista, Microsoft, Microsoft Partner

WebTrends & Social Networks

chlong — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 15:26:35 GMT

From Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim:

WebTrends releases a new version of their Marketing Lab web analytics product.

Mark Evans suggests that the music industry no longer needs fear peer-to-peer networks. It’s social networks that are sharing illegal music.

Not only are more of us using social networks, we’re spending more time on them that ever before.

Click here to subscribe to the newsletter.

Technorati Tags: WebTrends, Social Networks

Nick Mayhew

chlong — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 02:05:25 GMT

Nick has clearly been really busy blogging recently and posted some useful stuff:

Definitely a good blog to subscribe too :)

Photo from ARN.

Technorati Tags: Nick Mayhew, Microsoft, APC, SharePoint Server, Open Source

Do you have a customer story?

chlong — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 06:13:43 GMT

The customer evidence team are looking for some case studies about partners who are offering Software + Services solutions, including hosting and/or using our newest products such as: Virtual Earth, Silverlight, Expression, Surface, Office Communication Server, Windows Live, adCenter etc.

Please get in touch if you would like to nominate anything... case studies are a great opportunity to market to your customers as we write and publish a two-page case study about your success and/or capabilities with Microsoft products and even create a poster you can hang in their office. WOW!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Partners, Microsoft, Case studies