Microsoft on ISVs

Get Hands-on With Virtualization—on Us

We just learned about the US Virtualization Roadshow and thought this information would be valuable to our ISV Community.  Take a look below to see if any of the upcoming events are in your area.

Attend the event that lets you touch, talk about, and experience Microsoft® virtualization solutions. Hear from Microsoft virtualization experts on how Microsoft uses virtualization in its own data centers. Dive into robust hands-on labs and gain a technical understanding of the Microsoft virtualization strategy. Then, take home a valuable set of free products and readiness-focused giveaways to help get you started:^*

• A one-year evaluation copy of Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008
• A copy of Understanding Microsoft Virtualization from the Desktop to the Data Center, by Mitch Tulloch
• Vouchers for Microsoft Server Virtualization Certification exam (70-652) and preparation course (a $316 value)

Find out all about Microsoft virtualization.
Spend a day learning how a well-designed virtualization strategy can help you control costs, improve service levels, and drive business agility. See solutions built on the Windows Server® 2008 operating system with Hyper-V™ technology, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007, and Microsoft Desktop and Application Virtualization. And learn how you can leverage end-to-end virtualization to unlock benefits from the data center to the desktop.

The day's agenda is simple.

Begin your day with 300-level technical seminars:

• Session I: Server Virtualization and Management
• Session II: How Microsoft Builds Dynamic Data Centers
• Session III: Understanding Virtualization at the Desktop Level
• Spend the afternoon with experts and technology partners in our Solutions Pavilion, and experience Microsoft virtualization via hands-on labs.

Go home with the knowledge and products you need to start putting Microsoft virtualization into place in your organization.

Please click one of the 11 cities below to begin the registration process.

Microsoft and Teradata Collaboration at Teradata Partners User Conference

Microsoft and Teradata will be collaborating at the Teradata Partners User Conference in Las Vegas October 13 - 16

During this event, we will provide several opportunities to learn the latest about the partnership:

• Workshop - OLAP and BI Analytics with Teradata (10/12, 8:30 AM – 11:30 AM, Mandalay Bay L)
• Lunch n’ Learn - Teradata and Microsoft — Business and Technical Success Strategies (10/13, 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM, Mandalay Bay, Lagoon K)
• SIG - Microsoft BI & Teradata Interoperability (10/14, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM, Mandalay Bay, Lagoon L)
• Podcast (Interview recorded Monday afternoon and available from http://www.b-eye-network.com) 
• Booth Staffed with Experts (Booth # 114)

I’d like to highlight the “Lunch n’ Learn” session, which is titled: “Teradata and Microsoft — Business and Technical Success Strategies”

Are you looking for the latest information on the Teradata-Microsoft partnership?  Want to learn best practices from those who have actively delivered joint POCs and Deployments?

The Teradata and Microsoft Lunch n' Learn will be bringing together a group of peers interested in learning about the partnership’s business and technical success strategies.  During this session, you will gain the latest Teradata-Microsoft partnering details from Miles Stephenson, Teradata SVP Alliances; Bob Baker, Microsoft Director of Alliances; and Karl Dittman, Microsoft Business Development Director.  You will also hear from Rich Johnson, Lead BI Architect at Microsoft; and Teradata’s Rupal Shah, Technical Program Manager, who have both been involved in many successful joint Microsoft-Teradata projects. In addition, Matt Zenus, Teradata Product Manager and Vlad Eydelman, Technical Program Manager will share future technical collaboration plans between Microsoft and Teradata.

Date/Time: October 13, 2008; 12:00 - 1:00 PM (lunch will be served)

Location: Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay - Lagoon K

Space is limited. Please register as soon as possible to secure your spot as this is a first-come, first-serve opportunity. To Register or ask questions, send email to: Lunch n' Learn (v-chrikl@microsoft.com)

Hope to see you there!

Karl Dittman | Business Development  Director | Microsoft Corporation

Windows Team Seeking Developer input

The Windows Application Platform (WAP) team needs your input.  We would value hearing from developers about the needs and concerns around application installation and patching.  You'll be shaping the future of this product as your feedback will help the WAP team identify which areas of application installation and patching to target in the future that will help Windows developers most. If you have 10 minutes to take a survey, we would love to hear your thoughts about which aspects of installation and patching are most important, and need the most improvement. Click here to participate in this survey.

If you are willing to have one of the application platform Program Managers chat with you for a more in-depth conversation around your needs with installation and patching, please leave your e-mail address at the end of the survey. 

Thanks,

Michael Surkan

Windows Product Planner

New PDC2008 Announcements

The PDC team just made a few new announcements on the PDC web site that we thought would interest you:

• A major lineup of executive keynote speakers representing most of the core Microsoft businesses
• Featuring 20+ Windows 7 sessions, and we’ll be giving out the Win7 bits
• Including in-depth symposia sessions including parallel computing and S+S

This year, Ray Ozzie will lay out Microsoft’s vision for cloud computing and building applications that seamlessly bridge the gaps between PC, Web and mobile devices. 

And in the first keynote Ray will talk about the new world of Software Plus Services, with Bob Muglia joining him, to unveil our new Cloud Computing platform.

In a second keynote, Ray will return to talk about building immersive user experiences and introduce Steven Sinofsky, who will give developers a first look at the next version of Windows, Windows 7. Scott Guthrie and David Treadwell will also join Ray and Steven to dive deep on the latest Win32 and .NET platform advances that enable a next generation of user experiences spanning multiple devices, including a look at the latest developments in .NET, Silverlight, “Live Mesh”, and the rest of the client platform.

In keynote three, we turn the microphone over to coders extraordinaire Don Box and Chris Anderson, who will look at Microsoft’s latest technologies through the eyes of working developers.

And finally, in the fourth keynote, Rick Rashid will talk about how Microsoft research is helping to shape the future of computing.

And, the team also just announced on Channel 9 that all partners and customers attending the PDC will receive a very special gift this year - a 160GB external USB2 hard drive with all of the bits!  Very cool!

Planet Technologies - Four Time Winner of Microsoft Federal Partner of the Year Award

Planet Technologies Vice President, Andrew Norris recently visited Redmond to talk with Channel 9 host, Charles Torre.  Planet Technologies is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, and international IT consulting and services company with industry expertise in Microsoft technologies, architecture, security, and management consulting. They were recently awarded, for the 4^th year in a row, the Microsoft Federal Partner of the Year Award.   Below are a few highlights of this interview.

Andy Norris:  We’re a systems integrator, but the specialization we have is really taking all of the different pieces of the Microsoft technology stack and combining them, augmenting them, to deliver business solutions to a broad range of customers, everything from the hosting community and the service providers to the U.S. Federal Government and of course, commercial clients.

Charles Torre: Interesting, now I notice, having read just a little bit about your company before this interview, I normally don’t do that too much to make it more conversational.  You won the Microsoft federal Partner Award.  What does that mean?

Andy Norris:  Actually we won that 3 years running. 

Charles Torre:  Nice.

Andy Norris:  In ’05, ’06 & ’07, we won Federal Partner of the Year Awards from Microsoft, and in ’06 we won the Public Sector Partner of the Year Award from Microsoft.  So, it’s a series of awards given out by the Federal Sales organization from Microsoft and for a number of different things, including helping to drive a bunch of software pull through.  So, as a company that doesn’t resell licenses, we sell a lot of licenses.  So, it’s very easy for us to show through the work that we do the amount of new licensing that’s been sold to various different agencies, that kind of thing.  One of the really interesting ones we did on the technology side is what probably won us the Public Sector Partner of the Year award, was when Microsoft was struggling to compete with Google in the Federal space on the search side of things.  We built an appliance called the Prospector on SharePoint 2003, which we’ve updated to 2007, which was a search appliance predecessor to Search Server Express.  That gave all the reps out there in the market a competitive product they could put out.

Charles Torre:  Excellent.  So let’s talk a little bit about the domain that I usually spend most of my time in - the developer domain.  Most people I interact with are software engineers and we get geeky about platforms, .APIs and stuff like that.  What do you mean by, who’s your audience when you say business customer, what does that mean?

Andy Norris:  So, we have a lot of Fortune 500 very large companies that we’ve worked with.  We actually find ourselves working a lot with companies that are growing very, very quickly, and really need a platform that can be flexible and extensible to meet that requirement. 

To view the full interview, click here.

Turning Innovation Into Action

With all the technologies and products that Microsoft offers, how do partners use these products to improve decision making and give back to the community?  Here’s one example of a Microsoft ISV, ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute), who was recently interviewed for Channel 9.  A company 40 years in the making, ESRI has seen it all and they continue to push the envelope.  ESRI links technology with data; geography to the environment and world issues; people with the planet.  In this discussion, ESRI senior product managers give us an in-depth look at how they balance the old with the new, unmanaged code vs. managed, when they look at new Microsoft technologies and how they adopt them.   One of the quotes I liked touches on each of these aspects:

“We have a limited number of resources; we have to take care of them.” – Rob Elkins, Sr. Product Manager, ESRI

Check out the interview to learn how one partner takes advantage of Microsoft innovation and turns it into real world applications.

ESRI: Green Computing | Inside Out | Channel 9 Interview

“We don’t inherit the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children” – Interior Secretary Kempthorne at ESRI’s 2008 International User Conference

Heather Blatchford

Business Development Manager, Microsoft

Coroware CTO Talks About Future Of Robotics

Recently Channel 9 host Charles Torre had an opportunity to talk with David Hyams, Coroware’s Chief Technology Officer.  Coroware is a Microsoft Certified Gold partner with a unique focus on architecture, design and development of unmanned system solutions, or robotics.

Charles Torre:  Tell us a little bit about yourself and what your company does.

David Hyams:  Well I’ve had a long interesting career.  A lot of that has been spent in and around Microsoft, going back to the late 80s and early 90s, having worked on many, many different projects.  But more recently, my partner, Lloyd Spencer and I started Coroware back in 2003.  The primary focus that we wanted to put into a company was to build into what we saw was a lot of coming automation.   Our company is really driven through the desire to automate in all spaces.  Therefore, we actually do a lot of automation work in and around Microsoft.

Charles Torre:  Excellent, let’s talk a little bit about automation for the people in the audience.  That’s kind of a broad word.

David Hyams:  Yes, it is.

Charles Torre:  So, what do you mean?

David Hyams:  Well, in fact, if you break it down a little bit, we work with business systems, so there’s automation in the sense that workflows and applications now do a lot more thinking and require the user to be able, or enable the user, a lot more productivity, to get a lot more work done by not having to become schooled on what the application needs for information.  The application requests that information from the end user at the appropriate time.

Charles Torre:  Interesting.

David Hyams:  When it comes to our other work in robotics for instance, we do a lot of automation towards the future where we think robotics is going to serve a lot stronger role both in consumer products and in industry.

Visit Channel 9 Inside Out to view the full interview.

SQLSoft+: Teaching the Microsoft Platform

Recently, Channel 9 host, Charles Torre, had an opportunity to talk with Mark Scott, CTO of SQLSoft+, a Microsoft partner that focuses on training of Microsoft technologies. SQLSoft+ has the challenging task of building its training programs and services often before the Microsoft products are officially released.  How do they do it?  Here are a few highlights from the interview.

Charles Torre:  Usually who we interview on this show are what we call ISVs or Independent Software Vendors who are also partners, but they produce products.  They implement on top of our platform, they extend it.  It’s really interesting, you actually educate people on how to do said things, and you’re actually doing this at the MPSC, which is the Microsoft Partner Solutions Center.

Mark Scott:  Correct, so we do it both there and in our own classrooms and frankly all over the world.  We really position ourselves to be working with early adopters, with ISVs, with other folks who are trying to utilize Microsoft and other technologies, and really try and get the word out there as early as we can.  As Microsoft drops this technology into the water, and it starts a ripple effect, we try and be as close to the middle of that as we possibly can, and really help Microsoft get the word out there to the developers and ISVs, to systems integrators, to partners and what have you.  So, as a training company, you’re always sowing the seeds of your own demise.  We need Microsoft in Redmond and other software companies to keep providing product for us to train on, as technology moves forward, that we’re continually pushing ourselves at the front edge to try and bring that to the people who are looking for it, which typically are large corporate customers and really people who see technology as an advantage for them in their business.  So it’s exciting because we’re always in front of the latest and greatest.  I picked up a copy of Directions on Microsoft in the lobby.  I saw several articles about things we’re working with right now.  We’re actually on a global training gig right now for Forefront and some of the Microsoft the Desktop Optimization Pack.  We’re actually delivering that training all over the country and the world.

Charles Torre: Excellent.  So it’s interesting, you are named SQLSoft+, which is simply one of our products.  A big one though it is, it’s just one.

Mark Scott:  Yep.

Charles Torre:  But, what’s your spectrum?

Mark Scott:  SQLSoft+ started out as a development company in ’88.  We were building software tools for VB 1.0 and SqlServer on OS 2.0

Charles Torre:  Wow!

Mark Scott:  So, we actually started out as a tools company, and then found out that it takes much more money than we had to really be a tools company.  That was about the time that Back Office came out and so we actually got on the bandwagon and rode/saw NT come out.  We did all the training on that, then mail which turned into Exchange, and SqlServer through the various versions.

So we really focused up until about ‘95/’96 on just this huge outgrowth of products from Microsoft.  What they built out, the whole Back Office.  We were training HP, Compaq and all these guys on NT.  We did their early training and so forth.  So it was really pretty much focused on Back Office products initially.

The last thing I trained on was Windows ’95, and then I found my way into doing other things. But anyway, that’s really where we started and now we’ve extended to more business process types of classes.  What we’re finding is that as Microsoft is going from a horizontal platform applications company into standing up vertical applications, that the need for training changes.  You’re training now on the dynamics products and these types of things which tend to be a much different audience than the typical infrastructure guy or database, DBA kind of person who is taking the SqlServer classes and so forth.  Those people still exist; they still need the training, as they cycle through their careers.  We see people every 2-3 years; we see typical IT pros that need to recycle their skills about every 2-3 years.  But as far as our offerings goes, it’s gone beyond Microsoft, into typically products like I saw that Danny Kim at Full Armor presented when you met with him.

Charles Torre:  Yeah.

Mark Scott:  We actually have developed a course together with him around Full Armor, around some of the Active Directory objects and that kind of thing.  So, we’ve done that with several products as they come out.  We’re pretty opportunistic.  We’re a small company.  We’re just 30 people.  We have a consulting arm, we add that and we’ve got 50. 

For the full interview, visit Inside Out on Channel 9.

Microsoft Software Licensing and Protection Services enable ISVs to deliver trial, perpetual, and subscription licenses to customers

Increasingly, customers want software packages with feature sets tuned to their specific needs, paying only for the functionality that they use and increasing their return on investment, or they want a trial version that can be easily upgraded to a full version if they decide to buy. Variable-use licensing models like these are difficult to implement, present challenges throughout the product lifecycle, and vastly complicate the process of doing business for ISVs. This is where Microsoft Software Licensing and Protection (SLP) Services can help.

SLP Services helps software companies protect their IP, license their software with flexible terms, and manage information about how their software is sold and used—all while helping reduce complexity and costs. 

In a nutshell, here are 8 reasons why ISVs should consider SLP Services:

• Supports trial versions and perpetual, subscription, and utility models
• Supports creating multiple SKUs dynamically and within a single codebase
• Allows developers to focus on products, not licensing 
• Gives ISVs the ability to enforce and record license activation
• Provides feature monitoring to gauge user preferences and help guide future development
• Offers code protection to help keep valuable IP secure
• Starts at just $10/month
• And best of all… ISVs don’t pay for activations until their customers install and activate their software

Check out these resources to learn more: 

• Request an Evaluation to try out the SLP Online Service
• Tutorials provide hands-on experience with the services and tools Microsoft SLP Services offers
• Case Studies showcase customer successes with SLP Services

Cheers,

Srini Venugopal, Group Product Manager

Microsoft SLP Services

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Launched Today: Immediate Website Updates Required for Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Compatibility

Today, Microsoft released Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 in English, German, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese.  We will release Beta 2 in an additional 21 languages* within a month. Because you’re actively engaged in developing and maintaining websites, we want to make you aware of a display issue related to Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. Upon initial release, browsing in default Internet Explorer 8 Standards mode may cause content written for previous versions of Internet Explorer to display differently than intended. To enable existing content to display as expected, Microsoft is providing a Compatibility View that you can use to view sites that might be affected. This instructs Internet Explorer 8 to display site content as if it were in Internet Explorer 7. This option helps ensure that existing content will continue to display seamlessly in Internet Explorer 8 without requiring any additional code changes. 

Take these steps to implement the required updates and to learn more about the release of Internet Explorer 8:

• Update your site and your customers’ sites by using the Internet Explorer 7 compatibility tag. Follow the step-by-step instructions in the compatibility knowledge base article.
• Have your technical teams download and evaluate the latest Internet Explorer 8 Beta release.
• Advise your customers of this issue and the Internet Explorer 7 Compatibility View solution.
• For more information visit the IE Blog.
• Visit the Microsoft Portal Partner Portal site.

Internet Explorer 8 offers security, reliability, and interoperability functions that enhance the overall user experience while enabling you to build stronger relationships with customers. Use Internet Explorer 8 to connect with customers by providing access to your services through the Web. Significant security and privacy enhancements help reinforce customer trust of Internet-run businesses. Interoperability improvements offer better integration with your internal technology. And enhanced reliability for Web browsing delivers a more secure platform for business. Learn more about Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. 

Our partner community is one of the most important sets of relationships that we have.  If you have questions, please send an e-mail to the IE 8 team at ie8beta2@microsoft.com. You can also visit www.microsoft.com/isv.

*Additional languages are: Arabic, Chinese (Hong Kong), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.

Windows Vista 64-bit Adoption Growing

The installed base of 64-bit Windows Vista PCs, as a percentage of all Windows Vista systems, has more than tripled in the U.S. in the last three months according to a blog posted by Chris Flores on this blog entry Windows Vista 64-bit Today, stating that another view shows 20% of new Windows Vista PCs in the U.S. connecting to Windows Update in June were 64-bit PCs, up from just 3% in March.

For ISVs, this market growth means a new wave of opportunity, while at the same time the need to ensure your product works on 64-bit editions of Windows Vista. While most software will work unmodified on 64-bit editions of Windows Vista due to WOW64 (Windows 32-bit on Windows 64-bit, an emulation layer that enables 32-bit Windows applications to run seamlessly on 64-bit Windows platforms), you'll want to make sure your product works with WOW64 and provides a positive experience for your customers.

Following are a few resources to help you prepare for what some are calling “The Summer of 64-bit”.

• Check out the video interview with Microsoft team members, Gary Schare and Bruce Burns who talk about the sudden uptake of the latest Windows 64-bit client OS and what it means for ISVs. 
• For more information for developers about 64-bit readiness, see Be ready for 64-bit Windows Vista.
• The Windows Vista Developer Center provides you with resources such as Getting Ready for 64-bit Windows to help you ensure your programs for Windows Vista are compatible with 64-bit editions. 
• Best Practices for WOW64 - This paper defines best practices for building applications that run on WOW64.
• Get the latest on developing drivers and applications for 64-bit systems.
• Show that your products are compatible by participating in the Microsoft logo program and get listed in the Windows Vista Compatibility Center.

We hope you find these resources helpful.

Best Regards,

Microsoft ISV Team

Leveraging Product Engineering focused System Integrators

Among the top challenges facing ISVs on the engineering side of their businesses is skills and scale. Ask any VP of Engineering or CTO and they will tell you that they are struggling to meet the demands of their Product Marketing/Sales teams to add more features or to shorten the release cycles of their products because of engineering skills and capacity challenges.

One way for ISVs to overcome this challenge is to engage with product engineering focused system integrators or what most analysts refer to as ‘Outsourced Product Development’ or ‘OPD’ vendors. Most OPD vendors provide full life cycle software development services to software companies. Services may include program management, project management, architecture design, UX design, coding, testing and professional services. Most of them are offshore based and hence able to tap the vast pool of engineering resources available in developing countries. They may also provide compelling economic models for long term engagements by leveraging their offshore presence. Some of the more savvy and sophisticated OPD vendors focus on emerging technologies and leverage their alliances with technology providers like Microsoft. For example, some of them have solution architects co-located in the Microsoft Technology Centers (MTC) and they help Microsoft ISV Business Development Managers and Partner Account Managers to evangelize new technologies to ISVs through services like Architecture Design Session (ADS) and Proof of Concepts (PoC). These services enable ISVs to understand how new technologies from Microsoft can help them modernize their product portfolio and pilot new solutions that may give them a competitive edge in the global market. These sessions also provide the ISV an opportunity to evaluate the service provider and their capabilities.

A typical engagement begins with a preliminary call/meeting with the vendor to articulate your business challenge or integration scenario. This is usually followed by an ADS session that includes an overview of the Microsoft technology platform and white-boarding of how the technology can help you overcome the business challenge or create a new solution offering or modernize an existing solution. At the end of a successful ADS you should have at least 2 to 3 potential scenarios for a PoC. The next step is very crucial and here is where the real value of the vendor is realized - the execution of the PoC and the subsequent build-out of the solution. This is where the vendor leverages the skills and scale of resources they bring to the table. ISVs need to ensure that the vendors bring senior architects who are well versed in both the technology as well as the industry scenario that they are trying to address. It is highly recommended that you interview these resources before the execution of the ADS. This is just an example of a scenario and needless to say, it involves a commitment of time, resources and money for all parties involved. 

You can find more information on how to engage with OPD vendors via analyst reports such as the Forrester report from Sudin Apte titled ‘Tapping the Full Potential of Offshore Product Development’ . There are ISVs out there who have built strategic relationships with these types of vendors and reaped the benefits. I am confident you can as well. If you have any comments or suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Regards,

Sunil Cheruvatath, WW ISV Team

Get Your Head above the Clouds at PDC2008

Have you ever attended a Microsoft Professional Developers Conference? It’s an event so packed with great information and new technology, attendees claim their brains start sending back “out of memory” error messages. That’s what happens when a torrent of peer-to-peer geekology throttles your cerebral cortex.

At PDC2008, you can engage your senses and discover what’s new with Cloud Services, Live Mesh, Windows 7®, multi-core development, the Dynamic Language Runtime, and F#. There’s also much more, but we want to save a few surprises.

Oh, and here’s a little bonus for you: when you register before August 15, you’ll save $200 USD. Sweet!

Let’s break it down:

• PDC2008 is the place to hear about the future of Microsoft’s platform. You’ll hear from the actual engineers that architect and build our technologies, and they’ll blow your mind with everything they have to reveal.
• And what about the UnSessions, better known as Open Space? It’s our conference-within-a-conference for attendees…Microsoft folks need not apply. You can also spend time in our Hands-On Labs, which is like a big sandbox for geeks like us.
• Use your Jedi mind tricks to convince your boss to let you sign up for one of 10 super deep pre-con sessions, presented by industry experts and Microsoft technology leaders.
• Hear Ray Ozzie and other executives (don’t worry, they used to write code too) share their perspectives on the future of technology and computing. We call them keynotes, and you can expect some big news.

So, if you value your brain, we’d love to see you at PDC2008. Let us help you get your head above the clouds! Register (http://www.microsoftpdc.com/Registration/) for PDC2008 by August 15 at (www.microsoftpdc.com) to save $200!

Hope to see you there.

PDC2008 Dates and Location

WHEN:
October 27-30, 2008
Pre-cons October 26, 2008

WHERE:
Los Angeles Convention Center (http://www.lacclink.com/), Los Angeles, CA

B2B Leads - Get Some!

It doesn't ever change.  In the 5 years I've been in partner marketing at Microsoft I've been part of over 200 one on one partner interviews, 2 needs segmentation studies, dozens of focus groups and led a worldwide partner advisory council and the answer to the question "What can Microsoft do to help your business?" is always the same - HELP ME GET MORE LEADS!

Hopefully you got your answers at Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston a couple weeks ago but if you weren't one of the 10,000 people who made it then read on.

If you're a large Reseller or OEM of Microsoft's products like Office, Vista, of any of our Server families, you've likely been on the receiving end of many leads as we invest scads of < your favorite currency symbol here > for demand gen campaigns with the sole purpose of passing those leads off to partners to close.  People sometimes forget that more than 90% of Microsoft's revenue comes from the channel and not direct from end customers, so in the end partners are the sales force that funds virtually everything Microsoft and subsequently I do, including my family's annual camping trip to the Oregon coast, which helps me keep my sanity.  So if you're a partner I thank you, my wife thanks you, my kids thank you, and the Oregon visitor's bureau thanks you.

But what if you're not Ingram Micro or HP?  What if you're a software company selling feed management systems to pig farmers or a software product that actually competes with a Microsoft product?  Thumbing through Pig International the other day I took a quick look in the advertiser section. Hmmm. No Microsoft!

Well, even though you're unlikely to see a full page ad for Microsoft partners in the next version of PI there's plenty of ways to use your Microsoft Certified or Gold Certified status to fill your pipeline.  Here's a quick guide to a few of them:

Help potential customers find your solution with SEO Services.   The latest stats show that over 80% of customers looking for a software solution start their product research with a search engine.  While many of you have likely begun to invest in Pay Per Click campaigns with Google, Yahoo or Live Search, customers still tend to trust and therefore click on the organic results versus the paid ad by a ratio of over 8-1.  So the bottom line is if you can make your way to the top of the SERPs (search engine results pages) you'll likely reap tons of benefits in the form of click throughs.  SEO Services will help you get there by providing you with expert guidance on what to do increase those page rankings.  Oh and by the way - we do it for all search engines, including Google. 

But getting clicks is only half the battle.  It’s amazing the percentage of landing pages that fail to convert.  In tight times like these you simply can't leave leads on the table.  Nothing frustrates a visitor more than getting to your site and being unable to understand in 3 seconds what they are suppose to do.  Well if you were one of the 3500+ partners to participate in Microsoft's offer of a free 12 month subscription to Marketing Sherpa's premium marketing research you've likely taken advantage of their expert landing page guidance and case studies results.  If not I've got good news.  We are currently piloting a landing page optimization service that will help drive those conversions up.  In most cases even the slightest of tweaks to a whitepaper or trial offer landing page can often double conversions.  Stay tuned as we are expecting good pilot results and a full service offering to our partners sometime in this year.

Now, once you have some good prospects you'll want to qualify them before you send your sales team in.  Nothing hurts the relationship between sales and marketing more than passing off a list of unqualified tire kickers. If you’re fortunate enough to have an inside sales team then make sure you're spending the time to qualify - but if you’re like most marketing constrained software companies don't worry.  Microsoft has invested in a worldwide "on demand" telesales infrastructure exclusively for partners use.  Partner Telesales Services or PTS uses skilled sales agents who work on your behalf to qualify your lists.  We'll even provide you with lists from our existing PTS databases to augment your own.  Many of our Business Development Reps have years of B2B software sales experience.  Partner Satisfaction is off the charts with this service which supported over 1000 partner campaigns in the past 18 months and over $2 billion in partner pipeline.

These are just a few of the services that Microsoft has developed to enhance your ability to increase your opportunities.  There are many more.  Check them out at the ISV Opportunity Resource page.  Oh and if you're a pig farmer check out Feed Management Systems a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.

Cheers,

Chris Olson, Director Microsoft Partner Program

PDC 2008 to feature S+S, Silverlight, Live Mesh and more

This year, the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2008 will be held October 27-30 in Los Angeles, CA.  The PDC is designed for leading-edge developers and software architects. If you’re interested in the future of the Microsoft platform, you’re responsible for the technical strategy in your organization, or you’re a highly skilled developer who likes to delve deep into the heart of the platform, then the PDC is for you!

PDC 2008 currently has more than 160 sessions on the agenda, covering a wide range of topics for professional developers and architects, many including hands-on sessions. The sessions will provide in-depth technical information about Microsoft’s platform technologies, and practical guidance to help plan the evolution of your own products.

To exchange ideas with your fellow professionals and learn more about the future of the Microsoft platform, what's new with Windows 7, Live Mesh, cloud services, Silverlight and more, please join us at PDC 2008:  http://www.microsoftpdc.com.