This is my third week at being back with Microsoft and I thought it was time for an updated. Not sure if the first week should count as it was during Thanksgiving week, so needless to say not much got done. When starting a new job, regardless of it being at Microsoft of not, there is a lot of learning the corporate culture (I have a head start on this as I was with MS for 5 years already), learning your direct team, learning the processes associated with the job, and finally learning how to perform the actual tasks for the job.
So far things have been going great! I work in the Small Mid-Market Solutions and Partners (SMSP) in the Mid-Atlantic area for Microsoft. Our goal as a team is to help Microsoft Partners to sell and deliver Microsoft products, services, and solutions. We do this in a variety of ways.
First, there are events that we deliver in order to help educate local Mid-Atlantic customers on the great products that Microsoft is shipping (or going to ship), but deliver it in a way that shows not just features but also the scenarios and business value that our products help cover. In the past couple of weeks I attended two events.
The first event was called, "Experience the Microsoft Enterprise Product Roadmap". It was held at a Holiday Inn in Alexandria, VA and NS Rana (Information Worker, Partner Technology Specialist) discussed Windows Vista, Office 2007, and SharePoint Portal Server 2007. Ben Vollmer (Dynamics, Solution Specialist) did a presentation on Microsoft CRM. Carolyn Yehle (Licensing Specialist) provided us with some dazzling information on Microsoft Licensing. There was pretty good turn out and it went smoothly.
The second event was called, "Strategic Toos for Maximizing the Value of your Microsoft Investment" and it was held at the ESPNZone in Baltimore. It was a great venue and it was cool to see the presentations and demos on the main screens that the ESPNZone has strategically placed everywhere. I only made the second half of the event, so I don't know all of the topics covered, but we did give away some cool stuff, including an Xbox 360 by Insight (formerly named Software Spectrum).
In the future I'll be delivering sessions at these type of events. Since I'm the PTS focused on the Server side, I plan on doing many sessions soon on some of the latest products that Microsoft has coming in 2007! I'm really excited to soon sharing about Windows Longhorn Server, especially around Virtualization, IIS7, and more!!
There are also programs that we do WITH our partners. After all, the goal of our team is not to do direct sells with customers as it relates to the services side, but to work with a well equipped Microsoft Partner that can actually engage with the customer to deliver on a project. You may be wondering why we just don't engage with Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) and it's a valid question (hey I asked too). It all comes down to focus and scale. MCS is a great resources to have on a very complex and mid-large scale project, but they're often very expense and challenging to schedule when you need a pretty typical deployment of Active Directory, Exchange, and/or Operations Manager (MOM). This is where a local partner is outstanding!
So back to the Partner programs… One of the programs that I find very interesting is the Infrastructure Optimization assessments. Through this program, a customer will get a FREE assessment by a Microsoft Certified Partner. The Microsoft Partner will have a half day discussion/interview with the customer IT Management (and perhaps operations team) to review their current network/Windows architecture and their future deployment/implementation plans. The end deliverable is a business report that tells the customer of the current risks in their environment and a recommendation to better secure and utilize their current and future investments on their Microsoft purchases. I recently sat in on one with Nortech (http://www.nortec.com) to get a feel for how it's done. I plan to attend a few more of these to get a better understanding on not only the process, but to hear some of the concerns from customers about their IT implementations.
Infrastructure Optimization Link:
Anyhow, there's a lot more I'd like to share, but I think this is pretty good for this post. In the future I plan on sharing more of the Partner programs, licensing specials, and things that I've learned from a technology perspective as the days go on. Sharing….it's what blogging is all about!
For Partners – If there are blog topics, events you'd like for me to advertise, etc., please send me an email at: conradag (-AT SIGN-) Microsoft.com
This blog post written and posted from Microsoft Word 2007!