Ask IW UK Blog : Other

Helping ISV’s access Microsoft Skills Overseas

IW UK Partner Team — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:47:14 GMT

If you an ISV finding it difficult to find development resource in the UK and/or are thinking about outsourcing to India or elsewhere, have a look at Claire's posting about the Trade Mission to SE Asia.

UKTI will subsidise this trip (100%) for some companies as spokespeople and the Regional Development Agencies will provide grants to the remaining delegates. Our partners and Microsoft in the region will be providing substantial support on the ground so your costs are minimised.

http://blogs.msdn.com/armadillo/archive/2007/04/15/sign-up-for-the-trade-mission-to-se-asia.aspx

Which 2007 Office Application Are You?!

IW UK Partner Team — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 13:34:36 GMT

Just when you think you've seen it all, a new "cosmo" style personality quiz launched last week to determine which Office app you are most like... so if you have a couple of minutes, check out www.OnTheOfficeCouch.com. I'm

PowerPoint 2007... I think I saw that coming :)

Introducing Rob Morley who is searching for next-gen-ISVs

IW UK Partner Team — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:05:07 GMT

WelcomeRob Morley to the blogsphere. Rob works on the Empower programme for ISV's and has created a new blog at http://blogs.technet.com/empower/.

So what is the Empower programme? In Rob's own words:

"The Microsoft Empower Programme is a 12 month initiative (with the option to renew for a second year) designed to help Independent Software Vendors develop & release commercial software based on Microsoft technologies onto the market and ultimately to become Microsoft Certified Partners with the ISV competency - checkout the Empower website for more details."

We're already starting to see some very innovative stuff from our ISV partner community thanks to the Empower programme, so if you're in the business of software development and want some support from Microsoft, be sure to get involved.

EVO Supremo: win an Xbox 360, Alienware laptop, i-mate K-JAM and a Creative Zen

IW UK Partner Team — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 14:44:13 GMT

EVO Supremo is our new game for UK Partners. Test your knowledge on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007; Windows Vista and the 2007 Office system or your speed at searching! Click here for Terms & Conditions.

Good luck.

Play EVO Supremo for UK Partners!

IW UK Partner Team — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 15:58:00 GMT

Welcome back after the festive holidays. To help you get back into the swing of things, I challenge you to try and beat my score in our new game for Partners: EVO Supremo, either with your knowledge of our latest software or your speed at searching.

The game will officially be launched on 8 January 2007 and you'll be able to win some amazing prizes, like an Alienware notebook (with the 2007 Microsoft Office system and Windows Vista naturally), i-mate JasJam, Xbox 360 + games and a Microsoft Zune!

... if you would like to test your knowledge, play the game today by visiting http://www.microsoft.co.uk/evosupremo/.

UK EVO team meets Bobby Dazzler

IW UK Partner Team — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 21:53:00 GMT

Last week, Microsoft UK ran an internal version of Family Fortunes with David Dickinson... I was part of Mark Deakin's team, joined by Steve, Brett and Jessica as the Exchange family. We lost to Darren and his Office family - pah. But as Mark said, "It's not whether you win or loose, it's how you play the game" - haha. Jolly good fun.

Happy Christmas and Season Greetings

IW UK Partner Team — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 19:04:01 GMT

The UK Partner team wish all our Partners a Happy Christmas... and also developed a simple set of questions, which if you answer correctly, you'll earn the right to throw snowballs at them!

Whilst they are all heros in their own right, the chap to aim for is Karl who pops out in his suit on the left!

Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year from everyone at Microsoft, and from me!

Christian.

Registered Partners receive Vista and Office 2007 in January Action Pack!

IW UK Partner Team — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 21:19:00 GMT

The January 2007 Microsoft Action Pack Subscription (MAPS) is a special edition that includes key production information for the 2007 Office system, Windows Vista, and Small Business Server 2003 R2. The kit begins mailing on 10 January 2007.

I want to highlight the GREAT software included, along with special partner offers.

Included software in January 2007 MAPS:

Windows Vista Business
Microsoft® Office Enterprise 2007
Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007
Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 with Business Contact Manager
Microsoft Office Visio® 2007
Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007
Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007
Microsoft Expression® Web

Small Business Specialist (SBSC) “add-on” kit will be available in the March timeframe (for free). SBSCs will automatically receive this kit.

“I’m ready” contest: MAPS will contain one (1) flyer with either an Office or Vista product question – there are ten different questions in all. Answer the question and win a 256 MG USB drive. So install the software to help answer the questions...

Special Offers:

For Resale Copy of SBS 2003 R2: When partners use the Small Business toolkit (soon to be updated with Office, Vista and Mobile and complete five assessments, they can earn a free, for resale copy of SBS 2003 R2. For more details, go to: https://partner.microsoft.com/smallbusinesstoolkit7.
Vista Ultimate Upgrade offer (Windows Anytime Upgrade): Action Pack subscribers can upgrade to Vista Ultimate for $139 (USD) – per license. Visit www.WindowsAnytimeUpgrade.com/maps to learn more.
2007 Microsoft Office System and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Partner Sales Tool: The launch of the 2007 Microsoft Office system and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 present a significant opportunity for Microsoft partners. This Reseller Toolkit helps partners articulate product benefits and packaging and licensing offers.
Office Ready OPK: At the time this Action Pack was produced, the 2007 Microsoft Office Ready Master Kit (OPK) was not finalized for distribution. This product will be included in the April, 2007 Action Pack. Partners can contact their local Distributor and receive an OPK beginning mid December. And until April 1, 2007, Partners only have to pay shipping & handling costs. After April 1, 2007, the cost to receive the OPK from a Disti will be approximately $250 (USD), plus shipping & handling.

Thanks to Nicola for the information.

Windows Vista Demo Readiness Toolkit (DRT)

IW UK Partner Team — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:08:12 GMT

My colleague, James, blogged about this new readiness toolkit for Windows Vista... so when our Partners are out deploying the 2007 Office system, you could extend your solution by integrating it with Vista. Example solutions may include Search; Gadgets or security... check out James's blog for more information on how to use this toolkit for some cool image based demos.

Partner-TV Re-Launched

IW UK Partner Team — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 21:53:15 GMT

Our video blog, Partner-TV, was relaunched this week, by Steve Clayton. Watch his video summarising what we learnt and what has changed for this release. Other highlights this week include a video with Natalie Ayres (our UK Partner General Manager) and Tanya Shirlow with some Partner benefits too good to miss!

As always, please feedback via comments or email PTV@microsoft.com if you would like to contribute or have suggestions on which topics we should cover.

Visit Partner-TV today: http://blogs.msdn.com/ptstv.

Christian.

Live Barcode - enter business cards straight into Outlook

IW UK Partner Team — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 00:28:45 GMT

How I love this... I was just looking at my stack of business cards I collected attending my week of conferences and thinking of typing them in vs. buying a business card scanner.

So the general idea of this Live application is that you print an image generated by the Live site with your contact details on your business card which your Windows Mobile device captures with it's digital camera... then all you have to do is import it into your Contacts - brilliant!

Take the tour
https://barcode.ideas.live.com/

Power of Blogs

IW UK Partner Team — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 23:12:00 GMT

A little off piste compared to my normal IW postings, but on my way home tonight from work, I was listening to BBC Radio 4. I managed to catch the last few minutes of an interview with Canadian pianist, Angela Hewitt. Angela was awarded today with one of the most prestigious awards in the classical music industry: Gramophone's Artist of the Year award, awarded for her talent and her 11 year project to record all the major keyboard works of Bach.

What actually caught my attention was how Angela uses technology to emotionally connect with her audience. With classical music becoming "less popular", Angela turned to technology to help bridge the gap... as well as always signing her albums after concerts etc. Her high album sales are a testament to this. Kind of reminds me of Steve's blog on "Stormhoeking" and the The Stormhoek Guide To Wine Blogging.

Congratulations on the award Angela.

New HPC & Search Blog

IW UK Partner Team — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 00:20:00 GMT

Allow me to introduce you to a colleague's (Mike Pallot) blog, on HPC and Search... including a recent blog on resources for iFilters... . Head over to http://blogs.technet.com/mikep/ to check it out.

Almost a Month Old! Get in touch...

IW UK Partner Team — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 13:07:00 GMT

So the UK IW Partner Team have been blogging now for almost a month, with our first post on 4 April. We have had an overwhelming response rate with lots of you visiting us mostly through the RSS feed.

We would now like some feedback on what you have found useful and what sort of information is missing so we can provide with what you need and are interested in... please get in touch using the comments below or by emailing AskIW@microsoft.com.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Posted by UK IW Partner Team.

IW Partner Team Introductions!

IW UK Partner Team — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 13:34:00 GMT

Who are the IW Partner Team?

As this is a new blog for the IW Partner Team, I thought I would write and introduce each of us. Within Microsoft, we created a cross company IW virtual team, made up of the following people:

The Solution Channel Development managers, which in English means we look at the overall quality and quantity of Information Worker partners in the UK by solution area (Sandra for Enterprise Project Management & Real Time Collaboration; Ben for Office Professional Solutions and me for Portals & Enterprise Content Management).
Our Partner Development Manager, Katy – who looks at ‘To Partner’ Marketing and programmatic resources available to Partners, including this micro-site which is a fabulous one-stop-shop for current and new IW Partners wanting to know more about the Partner Programme. Click here to visit the site.
The Product Marketing Managers
The Sales and Technical Readiness & Training team

As a team, we want to use this blog as a way of raising awareness of the many resources you have as Partners to train; create demand and develop a customer pipeline.

As always, please email us with any feedback you may have (including the good stuff and where we need to improve).

We look forward to hearing from you,

Christian.