This week, I am lucky to be able to attend both the New York Internet Week and the Cloud Computing expo. On both events, I felt again that the customers have become the one element that is not in the picture.
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Last week, the news about the teaming up between Yahoo and Microsoft was all over the news. As if two companies trying to copy the behavior of a third one would lead to a dramatic change (more on that later). Most European  news agencies overlooked an event that can change the world much more. The MSFT-YHOO deal seems to be about capitalist forces joining for destruction, while the second one is using the forces of capitalism to be a constructive part of global society. Oddly, Bill Gates is involved in both events…

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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.

In a keynote on how Microsoft partners can address the small and medium businesses (SMB), the focus shifted very quickly to the opportunities in mobility.

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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…)