Say what? Microsoft Malaysia One ISV Technology Blog : benefits of partnering with Microsoft

Innovate In Malaysia

hoongfai — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:24:56 GMT

FAQ for Innovate On

Q. I have already profiled my solution on Innovate On portal but I didn’t print out any web pages during the solution profiling process. How do I go back to my solution profile details?

A. Login to www.innovateon.com using your Windows Live ID. You will see the following Innovate On homepage. You solutions are listed in the “My Solutions” section somewhere in the upper right-hand corner. Please note that you may have multiple solutions profiled.

Click on the solution link. This brings you to the solution profile web pages. Example of the first page is illustrated below.

To be profitable or not to be profitable?

hoongfai — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:19:27 GMT

You might think which idiot would want to run a business that is not profitable. True. So wouldn’t you want to invest some time to estimate the P&L for new business opportunities using a tool.

This is perhaps the best-kept secret on the Microsoft Partner Program. Check out this tool here.

I’ve often mentioned this to my ISV partners that whether they move into a software-plus-services world, or while they are debating whether to offer an on-premise solution or hosted solution, it all boils down to their own business model. While Microsoft is more ready than ever with the recent announcements about the Azure Services Platform at PDC, the parallel thought process should be about whether they are prepared for this new business model. I found this very good whitepaper that talks about how Microsoft delivers measurable business opportunities for partners in software-plus-services today.

How to profile your solution on InnovateOn

hoongfai — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:59:36 GMT

In one of my previous blog posts, I talked about InnovateOn and what are the benefits to you for profiling your solution.

Here are the steps to profile your solution on InnovateOn.

Sign in using your Windows Live ID at http://www.innovateon.com
Under My Solutions, create a new solution profile.
It takes 3 easy forms to profile your solution, as illustrated below:

Enroll Solution	Programs	Profile Details

When you click on Finish, the following screen appears:

Voila, you're good to go.

Support for ISVs in Malaysia

hoongfai — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:12:52 GMT

I get this question very often from our ISV partners. How do you get technical support especially for those hard-to-handle issues in your product development, and it is all to do with the Microsoft technologies you have adopted in your solution?

Before you call any of the numbers below, please make sure that you have your MSPP ID and details ready. A piece of advice: the 5-pack professional support is very affective. Please do not skimp on that. I do know of many partners who tried not to use their 5-pack professional support, for the fear that they would run out of it. If you have an urgent issue, use it, do not skimp it, otherwise you would most likely not use it anyway.

Here's what you can do (phone numbers only apply to Malaysia).

Microsoft Partner Program (MSPP)	1 800 88 5648
Licensing/Technical	1 800 88 6295
5-Pack Professional Support	1 800 80 6114
Microsoft Action Pack Subscriptions (MAPS)	1 800 80 1432 (Malaysia Product Activation Team Department)
Regional Support Center (SEAPART)	seapart@microsoft.com

Microsoft Partner Program (MSPP) - 1 800 88 5648

Dial 1	Microsoft Certified Professional Support
Dial 2	Microsoft Certified Trainer
Dial 3	Microsoft Partner Program (MSPP)
Dial 4	Microsoft Learning Solutions
Dial 5	ISV/Empower program
Dial 6	Microsoft Action Pack Subscriptions (MAPS)
Dial 7	Courseware
Dial 8	Partner Sales Management

Licensing/Technical - 1 800 88 6295

Dial 1	Bahasa Malaysia
Dial 2	English

Dial 1	Product Activation
Dial 2	Pre-sales & licensing enquiries
Dial 3	Microsoft Consumer Products (get ready with product identification number)
Dial 4	MSDN & TechNet subscription and media replacement
Dial 5	Microsoft Partner Services
Dial 6	Microsoft Action Pack Subscriptions (MAPS)
Dial 7	Courseware
Dial 8	Partner Sales Management

Dial 1	Gold/Certified Partner: Pre-sales Technical Support
Dial 2	Gold Certified Partner: Technical Support Coordinator (TSC)
Dial 3	Gold/Certified Partner with ISV Competency & Empower: Advisory Hours
Dial 4	Microsoft Activation
Dial 5	MSDN & TechNet media replacement
Dial 6	Regional Support Center (RSC)

What's the reality for a small-sized ISV trying to get help from its technology principal

hoongfai — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:48:55 GMT

Let's face it, the reality for a small-sized ISV trying to get help from its technology principal, be it any technology vendor is rather bleak. They may end up in any one of the following situations:

you may not be in their radar
you're being shoved aside
you don't know who from the technology vendor's local office to contact
you're being ignored from its technology forum because your problem is one in a million
fine, you got the business card from one of their technology specialists,you call him/her, and your first line was "hey so-and-so, remember me, I met you at this event?", and s/he said "huh? who's that? sorry I don't do this, could you please go to http://support.company.com
you're working way into the graveyard shift, and you're going crazy because you just can't find that piece of code sample that could resolve everything in your app
[fill in the more in the comments of this blog post]

I know because I was in their shoes once upon a time when I was working as the R&D Manager in a mid-size ISV in Singapore. My technology principal was a couple of J2EE Application Server vendors, a mobile phone vendor, and a developer tools vendor. I thought to myself, those guys are jerks, they don't care about their ISVs who are toiling day-in-day-out developing an excellent solution on their technology platform.

The table has turned on me. I now work for a technology principal or vendor, Microsoft, and there are heaps of ISVs out there in Malaysia. I know of very small ISVs which are so short-staffed that even the Managing Director does some level of coding. Heck, even my former CTO could whip out a connector to a SMSC in a mere 4 hours. Internally, these group of ISVs are categorized under Breadth ISVs. I bet that some of them may be upset at me for not remembering their names even though I had just spoken to them at TechEd, or ISV Innovation Day recently or as far back as in the year 2003. Or that they'd sent me an email by saying something "I am using WF to develop a workflow on MOSS 2007, but I couldn't deploy it on the *(*^^%&^ server, but this is as much information as I could provide to you". I must have been a jerk (like what I used to call those guys). I apologize if I had been all that.

We hear you, and we are trying to the best of our abilities to address the 800-odd (some say 1000+) ISVs out there in Malaysia. As a ISV Technology Advisor, my goal is to drive technology adoption among my managed ISVs, One ISV Connect ISVs, and breadth ISVs. The technology that I could "evangelize" to you is as much as your appetite for technology, and your adoption of course. If all my ISV partners are presented in a pyramid, you know where you fit, you get the drill? Scaling out is an everyday issue that hangs in my mind. Fortunately, there's help out there, and that's when we encourage our breadth ISVs to check out all the resources online. Before you jumped into any conclusion, by saying something like "I could guess it already, http://msdn2.microsoft.com, aren't I right?", hold your breath, here's what we have for you.

There are heaps of benefits by signing up on Innovate On. All you need to do is to use your Windows Live ID to sign up, then just tell us about the solution that you are developing. And off you go to search for all the technical resources for the solution that you are building. How does the Search know what technical resources apply to your solution? Well, when you profile your solution, you would have selected all the Microsoft technologies that you use in your solution, in turn the Search returns what's applicable to you. You could also further tailor your search in this cool Silverlight search application (I deliberately right-mouse clicked on the Silverlight app to show that it is indeed built on Silverlight)

You could tailor your search based on

Microsoft technologies
Audience target
Stage of product

But the juiciest benefit is ISV Technical Support!!!!

5 hours of free email tech support for your Windows Mobile solution

10 hours of free email tech support for your Windows Vista solution

10 hours of free email tech support for your 2007 Office system solution

The types of support requests you can raise are:

· Best practice

· How-to question

· Code sample

· Technology adoption guidance

I've said enough, click on that Innovate On image!

Rock on!!!

hoongfai — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:25:08 GMT

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Nope my English name is not Jack, and I don't have one. Call me Fai. But not Fai Lai (in self-deprecation style, Fai Lai sounds like Fried Rice - pronounced with silent 'R' it sounds like 'L').

I am a proud owner of XBOX 360 Elite, the 65 nm (Falcon) console, and yes I have verified it after reading this.

You could spot the XBOX 360 console amidst the pile of goodies that I painstakingly brought back from the States. But this post is about starting my own band, a Rock band!

I've been putting my Rock Band set to good use. After all it's a social game, I ain't playing the drums and singing the vocals at the same time, or possibly strum on the Fender Stratocaster and play drums at the same time. I've had many jammin' sessions at my condo, with friends, colleagues and even an ISV partner (see the benefits of partnering with Microsoft? :p) [Did you notice the TechEd SEA 2008 bag on the floor?]

Now there's an inherent problem with the drum pads and bass pedal. Beating on the drum pads incessantly drowns the music on the Rock Band game. In fact I have a friend who's a "violent drummer" and he justifies that it's all part of the game. The bass pedal, you wouldn't want it to end up like this, would you?

I started a Rock Band drum pad modification project. Let's start with the drum pads. I bought real practice discs for the purpose. What caught my attention were the following features:

Reduces Volume up to 90% (although I don't like the one-floor-below neighbor, I still want to be a good neighbor by not troubling her to ring my condo bell every time she detects the slightest noise from my unit)
Long lasting durability (remember my "violent drummer" friend, and you'll know durability is high on my priority)

1. Use an A4-size paper, place it on top of the drum pad, use a pencil to draw the outline of the drum pad circle. Use a pair of scissors to cut according to the outline.

2. Place the cut-out paper circle and place it on top of the practice disc. Start with the largest practice disc. I used the 16 inches toms practice disc to begin with. I was able to cut out 3 circles out of that. Use a sharp blade to cut around the cut-out paper circle. See diagram below, that was for the 4th piece, which I used the smallest diameter practice disc (12 inches).

3. Use double-sided tape to hold the practice disc against the drum pad surface. I used industrial strength double-sided tape, and you already know why (remember violent drumming?)

4. VOILA! Drum pads mod done.

5. Next the bass pedal. I can't perform a DIY on the pedal, so I ordered this pedal metal with hinge from a private seller on Amazon.com.

Practice discs RM150, and pedal metal with hinge US$30.95 (inclusive of $11 shipping charges), the result: Better drumming scores on Rock Band, and no qualms of beating incessantly on the drums! I didn't know that my good colleague/friend, William Tay, from Singapore is a drummer. Anyway he told me that I should get the basics right, that is I need to master the 26 rudiments (and some say 40 rudiments). I shall try.

Anyone game for Enter Sandman, Metallica on Hard mode? It's Friday after all.