Do you want to know what the Slovenians where doing in Houston?

Of course, enjoying!
We had a great time there and it was very useful for establishing new friendships, and strengthen previous established ones. Check our pictures.
The next year will be in New Orleans!

"Microsoft copies Google, Salesforce, and Red Hat in new partner initiative"

That is the title of an article I found on News.com (click to read).
Actually I wanted to give a comment but their site is not working well, temporarily, so here goes my comment:

For persons that attended the WPC in Houston the idea of the new partnership strategy is clear. All the event was designed to tell us that MSFT is not preparing to attack their partner base, actually they are preparing to make more sense of the huge value added their partner base can provide.

Microsoft's goal is to provide all the platform needed by partners to concentrate on adding customization, services, development and of course consulting.

If you see, selling licenses is not very profitable if it is not used as an opportunity to get a customer. When the licenses are sold, then the customer could be better prepared to ask for other kind of ITC services. Therefore the business will be in the value added and that is 100% for the partner.

Microsoft's wish is to motivate partners to change their business models and get advantage of Software + Services. That would help partners to focus on sales, realization and worry less on infrastructure.

In the case of small business. Why to pay for hosting environments and maintenance when Live services are for free? (www.smb-email.com)

I don't think that MSFT is copying anybody. It is obvious that it is flexing its stronger muscle in order to catch up. Microsoft built this formidable partner base, and actually they depend on us for achiving success. If partners start moving to other technologies and add value using that new knowledge... then Microsoft could face a strong problem.

Where is the opportunity? Partners that adapt or change their business models fast will get the best out of it. Partners slower to adapt will see Microsoft as competition. This is a great moment for small business!

Harry Brelsford at WPC

Harry Brelsford on varvid.com from Aaron Booker on Vimeo.

I had the pleasure to participate with harry in the Panel presentation about making business in the public sector. He is doing a great job with SMB Nation and check the video to learn more about his involvement in the eductaion sector.

Check videos about the WPC in Houston

Are you interested in checking the keynotes and other interesting videos? Visit the Digital WPC.
For me this will help me a lot because I couldn't see many of the keynotes because of networking activities. Don't lose the keynote from Steve Balmer!

Solution profiler? no thanks.

It looks like Microsoft heard the claim and they made serious work on improving the look and feel for the new "solution profiler". Now it is called Microsoft Pinpoint. It is still in "beta" and only available for US.
Anyway, I think it is good for partners all around the world to check this in order to be prepared and learn how to profile your solutions. PinPoint offers a rating system for users to share feedback.

Monday, a good start!

I was worried about what Monday would bring. Actually I have reserved most of the day for the presentation I was going to participate in, the name: Small and Midsize Business Partner Forum - Finding Revenue Opportunities in the Public Sector.
before that event I have been listening to the great presentation from 2 PAL members, Kim Walker and Oliver Kiel. I have to say that they convinced me that selling licenses is a good alternative. Let me elaborate the topic a bit more:
B4Contact, the name of the company where I work, is not a big fan of selling licenses. Even we make it when needed we are not focused on increasing sales of it. Why? because we are focused on selling our SharePoint Simple CMS solution and related services. So, how come that now I think selling licenses is a good opportunity? Well it is simple, licensing is one more reason for your customers to establish a relationship with your company. Most customers like to receive IT services from one provider instead of many. That is because customers like to establish a "trust" with providers capable of helping them.
That means that I could be selling SharePoint services to customers that started a business relationship with us because they needed new licensees. And of course that business brings other kind of benefits like more revenue, more support and credit from Microsoft.
Here a couple of pictures from Kim's presentation:



But what about my presentation? Well, I have no pictures of it but I can share with you the conclusion of it:
Making business in the public sector is not as difficult as it looks. All the members of the panel had the same experience and no matter from which country they come. In all the cases the recipe is the same: Award the success achieved with your customers, find the "hero" within and help them to share their experience.
All the presenters experienced a huge growth in their business, in some cases of 80% per year! It happens because the communication within the public sector works better than in the private sector (where most of the persons are in "defensive" mode against competition).
My part of the presentation was focused on the success we are getting in the education sector in Slovenia. And the most important from it can be summarized in the following points:

1. It is not a problem if you run a small business. If you have something to offer to the public sector don't be afraid.
2. Find partners that could help you. Microsoft is a good alternative because of the Partners In Learning initiative and their many citizenship initiatives.
3. Concentrate in making your customers feel special! Most of them are tired and bored of bad or low quality trainings and events organized by Ministries or other public organizations.
4. If you are a European based business check for your local EUGA representative and get to know how can they help you to participate in tenders.
   

Please feel free to contact me if you have some question regarding the topic. I will be very glad to contribute.

Sunday, PAL day!

Sunday was a very interesting day. I had the chance to talk with Neil Pearlstein and Ben Walton while waiting for the meeting with the rest of the PALs. It took place on the Minute Maid park.
Seeing again the "ol pals" was a really good feeling!
After the meeting we went to a Bar where we had an exclusive dinner with some MVPs and also some Microsoft guys. It was fun and interesting. I had the chance , thanks to Shuresh, to meet Mr. Peter Hillary, a successful adventurer with many things to teach. His father, Sir Edmund Hillary, was the first known person that reached the summit of Mount Everest.
So.. what can I tell you about the meeting we had on Sunday?
I can say that there are changes that will progressively come to the SBSC program. In the next few weeks you will get to know more about it. I can also say that Microsoft is truly thinking on becoming more efficient in the SME business and that will be an evolution that partners will have to embrace in order to get advantage of new opportunities.

Here some pictures:



"Please remove whiteboards away from Fabio!! :) "
Click here to see more about all the SBSC Partner Area Leads.

Saturday was a nice day!

After all the adventures of the trip I had a really interesting Saturday.
At around 8am in the morning I met with the Slovenian delegation. We shared the day and went to make "some money"! drink coffee, eat very good steak and shrimps and get a picture with a greyhound winner! What else can you ask for?
Yes Shoping too... and yes we aso visited a baseball stadium:



Beautiful morning, huge buildings, a lot of coordinations, more nice buildings, cool effect, repairing a baseball court, grass rolls..., greyhound, gumblers, coffee!, skycrapers, children's work.

The Microsoft WPC 2008 is ready to start

This is the second time I will be involved in the Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference. The past year was a great experience and I have high expectations for this one.
After a very unpleasant trip from Slovenia to Houston I'm finally getting ready for my first meetings and activities.
Here goes the story of how the trip started:
At 2 am in the morning I woke up and prepared to go driving from Murska Sobota to the Airport Brnik, close to Ljubljana. Everything went as planned, I arrived to the airport on time.
Waiting and waiting the flight was delayed. And because of 15 minutes I lost my connection from Amsterdam to Houston.
But the delay gave me time to buy something I wanted to give as a present to some special visitors I will have in Houston! At least something good! I bought 2 bottles of very special Slovenian wine for a not special price... something like 45 euros per bottle!
I arrived to Amsterdam and I had to wait for the new connection. Instead of having a direct flight I got a trip to Detroit, where finally I would get the flight to Houston.
Yes, but something wrong happened also in Amsterdam. They confiscated my 2 bottles of wine! for security reasons they confiscated them because the special packaging they gave me is valid within the EU and not to visit the United States. No alternatives... at least I hope someone got an exclusive party for free!

In Detroit the security checkup was long and really stressful. It took more than one hour. And of course there I found that my luggage was still in Europe. When arrived to Houston I reported the problem and I started thinking how to be dressed the next day?