Innovation for Partners in the UK : CDS

MSDN Premium get Expression Blend & Web

ukpartner — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 20:26:57 GMT

We've been pushing for this internally and are all very pleased with the announcement to include Expression Blend & Web in MSDN Premium. There is a downside to this in that many (most) developers should not have access to Blend - it's way too dangerous for the non user experience designer.. but most small shops tend to have one person that does both dev + design so it makes sense.

Read more about it on the UK Web Agency blog.

- Paul

Technorati tags: WPF, WPFe, Blend, Web, MSDN

5-minute guides to AJAX, Expression, Live, WPF, and WPF/e

ukpartner — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 12:05:17 GMT

About 3 months ago our team made a great acquisition - Andrew Shorten.

Andrew has been helping developers, partners and customers leverage the Internet as an application platform over the last 8 years; from designing & building web-based solutions for enterprise customers at Fujitsu, through to evangelising about the importance of user experience and smart client technologies at Macromedia/Adobe. Andrew believes that experience matters and nowhere is this more important than when accessing services, applications and content online – he is excited by the opportunities that “Web 2.0” and rich Internet applications present to deliver applications that people actually want to use and which deliver real business benefit.

One of the great things about having someone with this experience is they can relate first-hand the strengths, weaknesses, and unique opportunities Microsoft's client / web technologies present for custom development agencies.

In light of this, Andrew put together a series of quick 5-minute guides to several Microsoft technologies from a non-Microsoft perspective. Check them out:

- Paul

Technorati tags: AJAX, Expression, Live, WPF, WPFe, Adobe

Web 2.0 Mashup Competition

ukpartner — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 12:18:33 GMT

James has just announced a Web 2.0 mashup competition. If you're a developer looking to experiment with Web 2.0 and various complementary services - BT has built a sandboxed environment for you to give it a go, with a $25k price to boot.

www.networkmashups.com

What is Innovation?

ukpartner — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 14:00:00 GMT

Technically speaking, it's the introduction of new things or methods.

Innovation is a topic I've debated with many people, including professors at Instituto de Empresa (translated), colleagues, and in my own head. It's a tough one, who innovates and who doesn't? Does innovation matter if you're profitable and forecast growth? Is innovation too risky for established companies? People often debate if Microsoft innovates and to me that question is irrelevant. Microsoft is a platform company and well over 90% of our business is done through partners. In some cases we make the call to step back and deliver the end product (XBox, Zune, etc) but most of the time we bank on partners delivering innovative products into the market.

So the real question is not does Microsoft innovate, but does Microsoft enable their partners to innovate?

You might ask, does innovation even matter? I think the FT says it best:

Innovation used to happen by chance, if it happened at all.
Not any longer. Today, the world's most forward-thinking companies see innovation as an engine for growth and, therefore, something that must be strategically managed and securely harnessed. It is the new currency of competition. It is the key to organic growth and wider profit margins. It is, in short, the Holy Grail of business in the 21st Century and companies must keep innovating if they are to keep growing. [link]

So why is our team focussed so heavily on partner innovation? We see it as the key competitive advantage to software partners and we want to do everything possible to ensure Microsoft's partners are successful today and tomorrow. To put it even more bluntly, your success is our success.

What do you think: does Microsoft enable our partners to innovate?

post by Paul Murphy

What is this blog? This will be a technical voice to the 4,000 independent software vendors (ISV's) and 6,000 custom development software (CDS) partners in the UK. The target audience for this blog will be developers and architects within those organizations and our goal is to provide you with specific resources and insight to help you and your companies succeed with innovation.