A colleague sent me a link to a PressPass article today, entitled, "The Value of Partners in Microsoft’s ECM Ecosystem" which has an excellent FAQ on our ECM Partner Ecosystem.  I especially like Robert Bernard's (General Manager of the Global ISV group at Microsoft) comments on Partners:

PressPass: What is the role partners play in this ECM offering?

Bernard: Microsoft’s ECM offering provides several capabilities out of the box, which ensures that organizations recognize the value of their ECM solution more quickly. However, the needs of businesses around the world are so diverse that companies have various applications that need to be integrated in a comprehensive ECM strategy. Thus, Microsoft needs partners in its ECM offering who present a diverse range of capabilities and support for its customers.

Partners are an integral part of Microsoft’s vision for ECM, and Microsoft’s ECM offering is designed to provide a lot of extensibility mechanisms for partners to integrate their products and build value-added solutions and services on top of Microsoft’s ECM platform. Additionally, support for industry standards such as Web services and SMTP allows Microsoft’s ECM offering to co-exist in a heterogeneous environments.

Microsoft’s move into the ECM space caused a lot of momentum in the market – and that momentum can be beneficial for partners. This momentum and industry excitement provides a huge opportunity for partners to build solutions and services Microsoft’s platform. Our partners have demonstrated their ability to provide the best possible products and services to the Microsoft customer community. By being based on the Microsoft .NET platform, their products are seamlessly integrated into Microsoft’s products.

Partners enhance and complement the Microsoft ECM platform. For example, I can think of three major areas where they add value:

• Building compliance solutions

• Delivering vertical/horizontal solutions

• Rounding out Microsoft's ECM suite with functional extensions

Microsoft is working very closely with its partners. Their solutions will obviously fit tightly with the Microsoft ECM framework and also address important customer needs

PressPass: Why do partners want to work with Microsoft?

Bernard: I think partners want to work with Microsoft for the same reason Microsoft wants to work with partners. We have a unified focus on the end customer. We share those customers, and it’s in everyone’s interest to provide a seamless integrated experience.

This article also links to a good Q&A on "Making ECM a part of every Information Worker's reality".

Posted by Christian.