Alisson Watson gave an overview of the Microsoft Partner program of the last five years, as an intro to announce the changes that can be expected in the next months. The changes in the program are around:

• people ready:
  • the way customers decide
  • the way partners market
  • the way microsoft markets
• differentiation: Microsoft confirmed again that they are willing to help differentiate partners better. These days we have three levels (registered, certified, gold certified)  of partnership in several competencies. It became clear again that Microsoft will work further to help customers choose the partner that can help him best. The main measures for this concept will be around customer satisfaction, technical and business dept, the investments made in the business.
• profitability and growth
• evolve with “software + services” (or “S+S” as it is referred here)

More information has been made available to the customers of The Antena Group.

We had an interesting first set of sessions this morning at the world wide partner conference of Microsoft in Houston. Alisson Watson, the VP for partners, opened the conference today in the Toyota Center. 12000 attendees heard here giving the main themes that will be addressed in the next few days. (more…)