Yesterday it was the snow that kept your humble blogger home. Today, an icepocalypse has displaced the snowpocalypse that kept Pacific Northwest folks stranded these last 36 hours. To capitalize once more on the added bandwidth a “work@home” day offers, I thought I’d continue our ongoing “Spotlight on...

First off, I’d like to wish all of you a very belated happy New Year! May your 2012 be a year of filled with good health, lots of happiness and plenty of business prosperity! I fully realize that I’ve been a bit behind on my blogging thanks to the post-holiday dig out. But, as luck would have it, the...

Pop quiz : How many of you--especially those of you who have a PSP (a/k/a Partner Solution Plan ) with Microsoft--were aware we publish a great set of content and tools to help solutions partners (like SIs) deliver on our joint go-to-market objectives? Good to see all those hands raised! Now, for the...

Sadly, I cannot remember which comedian who’s bit it was—although I suspect it was something the great George Carlin once said—but it goes something like this: saying "it’s always the last place you look” after someone shares they’ve located a missing item (like car keys or a wallet) after a long...

Okay. You can officially call off the search parties, because I have not gone missing trying to locate the mythical “ Building 7 ” on our Redmond campus or some other mishap that has resulted in my going dark on the blog for the past month. Actually, I just took a few weeks off and, now, I have successfully...

No surprise, right? You’re probably saying, “Yeah, Ian. I get it. Exchange 2010 is a solid release and customers are clamoring for it , like you’ve mentioned many times before.” Okay, fair point. And, following all of the energy coming out of this year’s edition of WPC around killer products you can...

WPC is certainly a gift that keeps on giving! Align these lines, I am pleased to share with you the video replay from Julia White’s Exchange general session (a/k/a BP04 – Dollars, Euros or Yen: How Exchange Brings You Growth Opportunities from On-Premises to the Cloud) is now available. Just swing by...

When I first kicked off this Exchange partner blog, about five months ago, I opened with a seemly innocent comment about how there were “only 159 days until WPC11.” Not surprising, those 5+ months just flew by, and before we realized it, we were all in L.A. for a week chock full of keynotes, sessions...

The “Partner of the Year” awards are perhaps one of my most favorite parts of the run up to each year’s WPC . “Why’s that, Ian?” you may ask. It’s pretty simple, yet so rewarding (no pun intended). Each year, I get the chance to review a batch of award submissions and get a glimpse into the amazing things...

A few months ago, I read a great article by Wired magazine’s editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson , about how video is the next (or, perhaps, the current) big engine to share ideas and fuel innovation versus other mediums like the written word. This article really resonated with me, including the examples...

Who doesn’t like videos? One only needs to take a look at the stats from comScore’s recent online video rankings to confirm this as fact. They shared that “171 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in January for an average of 14.5 hours per viewer.”   Dang, that’s a lot of small...

Happy February 1st! I, for one, cannot believe we’re already one month down for 2011. The good news? Worldwide Partner Conference 2011 -- our yearly Microsoft partner confab -- is one month closer! And, after you’ve spent the day watching the thermometer travel between 30° and 45°, as well as take in...