Irish Partner Blog

Looking for a Financing solution in 2009?

2009-01-06T13:12:15Z

Here's what Microsoft partners have to say about Microsoft Financing:

Donal Cullen, CEO of SpanishPoint and a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner:

"The current economic environment is causing a more rigorous analysis of IT projects which now must demonstrate a clear return on investment. This finance solution will allow Microsoft partners and customers to package the costs for software licences, infrastructure and services and through financing match the payments against the investment period."

Eamon Breen, Managing Partner of Inspired Software & Services Ltd and Microsoft Certified Partner:

"Most customers we talk with want to use SharePoint to drive greater productivity within their business, sometimes the upfront cost of the total solution can be a barrier. With this Finance solution Microsoft has really helped remove the upfront capital cost and align to our customers preference for a monthly billing process for their I.T. services"

Click on the image above for more info!

Microsoft Club are offering this special promotion to partners.

2008-11-14T14:46:47Z

You will need to sign-up to take advantage of the offer - full details below. As always if you would like to request further info please contact us.

Double your earnings on Open Value until end of December

This is a special issue of Microsoft Club e-news. Why? Because we're organising a special promotion exclusively for Microsoft Club partners.
Read on to find out how you can double your earnings on Open Value and Open Value Subscription.

Double-Your-Money promotion

From 29 September to 26 December Microsoft Club is running a special promotion on Open Value and Open Value Subscription licenses for Professional Desktop SKUs. The promotion covers the following products:

Microsoft Office Professional 2007
Microsoft Core CAL suite
Microsoft Windows Vista Business Upgrade

It's great to receive rewards. During this promotion it gets even better: you'll receive double the standard awards on eligible products. For example, get up to $18.40 total earnings on Microsoft Office Professional and $29.20 on a full Professional Desktop !
This is just one of the great rewards available from Microsoft Club. For more details on Cash Rebates and Coop Marketing Funds earnings for each eligible product and license during this promotion, please go the reward table posted on the Microsoft Club website.
NOTE: Open Value earnings from the "Double-Your-Money" Promotion are included in the regular earning rates until the end of the promotion period.

Benefits for you and your customers

By selling Open Value and Open Value Subscription licenses you can gain attractive advantages. Of course you'll receive double earnings on selected products. In addition, you'll build and strengthen valuable long-term relationships with your customers.
Your customers will also benefit. They'll receive the best Microsoft productivity software including all new Desktop product releases under Software Assurance (SA). SA includes Microsoft Office Home Usage Rights, and also technical support from Microsoft (TechNet +24/7) They will certainly appreciate the simple one-contract license management. Also, if the Open Value contracts are company-wide, or if your customers purchase the full desktop offer, they get even better purchase conditions.

What are you waiting for? Start doubling your money today!

You'll find answers to most of your questions on the FAQ page of the Microsoft Club site. Still have an unanswered question? Refer to the Microsoft Club Partner Guide. You can find it on the website under "About the Club".
Another option is to contact the helpdesk at clubhelp@msdirectservices.com.
Supported languages: English, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish.
Open from Monday to Friday 9:00 to 18:00 CET (GMT+1).

©2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, the Microsoft logo and other product names contained herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. For a full list of trademarks please refer to www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/trademarks/

Software-plus-Services - what's new?

2008-10-30T14:55:51Z

The goal of the software-plus-services strategy is to empower customers with richer applications and more choices in how software is consumed, and provide partners greater opportunity through a combination of on-premise software, partner-hosted software, and Microsoft-hosted software.

Now you can stay updated and subscribe to the S+S Partner Newsletter today by clicking here! You may also view archived copies of past newsletters by visiting the archive site here.

The Software-plus-Services Partner InfoWeb Site has all the latest information including new partner readiness materials, such as the Software-plus-Services Partner Opportunity Field Guide, white papers, readiness videos, and additional sales and marketing resources.

Technorati Tags: Partner

Jason Langridge's WebLog - MR Mobile!

2008-10-30T14:40:48Z

Jason writes a blog dedicated to Windows Mobile in the Enterprise.

He's a big fan of the Celio Redfly device as it's a great way of extending your Windows Mobile device and turning it into a sub-laptop. Read more here.

Partner to partner training

2008-10-15T13:16:33Z

Larry Doyle from Netforce will be doing a demo on Virtualising SBS 2008 on a Hyper-V Cluster and Failing over.

The event will be on at 6pm at Netforce's office on Friday 24th of October.

Spaces are limited so please email to reserve your seat today by emailing david@sbsireland.com

If you have any training you would like to share with other partners - please let us know by leaving a comment below.

Who's who - Microsoft Ireland

2008-09-30T14:22:04Z

Click on the image below for an overview of the Microsoft Ireland management team (also a very nifty example of Silverlight in action!)

MAP your customer's future.

2008-09-30T13:44:05Z

Patrick Herlihy is Partner Technical Specialist - Business Productivity, here at Microsoft Ireland. Patrick highlighted this new tool which is now available to partners and sent on this overview.

Feature Overview

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) performs three key functions; hardware inventory, compatibility analysis, and readiness reporting.

Three Key Functions of Microsoft Assessment and Planning

Secure and Agentless Inventory

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) provides secure, agent-less and network-wide inventory that scales from small business to large enterprises. It collects and organizes system resources and device information from a single networked computer. Assessment tools often require users to first deploy software agents on all computers to be inventoried, but this tool does not. MAP uses technologies already available in your IT environment to perform inventory and assessments. These technologies include Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), the Remote Registry Service, SNMP, Active Directory Domain Services, and the Computer Browser service. Assessments can be completed on the following Windows platforms:

· Windows Vista

· Windows XP® Professional

· Windows Server 2003T or Windows Server 2003 R2

· Windows 2000 Professional or Windows 2000 Server

· Windows Server 2008

Comprehensive Data Analysis

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) performs a detailed analysis of hardware and device compatibility for migration to Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Application Virtualization, and Windows Vista. The hardware assessment looks at the installed hardware and determines if migration is recommended. If it is not recommended then the reports tell you why it is not.

In addition, MAP has expanded its capabilities into assessment areas of Hyper-V server virtualization, desktop security, and SQL Server 2008 migration.

Device assessment looks at the devices installed on a computer and reports availability of drivers for those devices. Device assessment is provided for both Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista migration scenarios.

For customers interested in server consolidation and virtualization through technologies such as Hyper-V or Virtual Server 2005 R2, this tool helps to gather performance metrics and generate server consolidation recommendations that identify the candidates for server virtualization and how the physical servers might be placed in a virtualized environment.

In-Depth Readiness Reporting

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) generates reports containing both summary and detailed assessment results for each migration scenario. The results are provided in both Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word documents. Reports are generated for the following scenarios:

· Identification of currently installed Windows Client operating systems, their hardware, and recommendations for migration to Windows Vista. This tool also reports if desktops have anti-virus and anti-malware programs installed or if the Windows Firewall is turned on.

· Identification of currently installed Windows Server operating systems, their hardware, and recommendations for migration to Windows Server 2008 (including a report detailing currently installed server roles and SQL servers).

· Identification of currently installed Microsoft Office software and recommendations for migration to Microsoft Office 2007.

· Detailed assessment and reporting of server utilization gathered using the Performance Metrics Wizard.

· Recommendations for server consolidation and virtual machine placement using Hyper-V or Virtual Server 2005 R2.

· Assessment of client machines, servers, and the technology environment for the implementation of Microsoft Application Virtualization (formerly SoftGrid).

· Reporting of SNMP-enabled devices found in the environment during inventory.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb977556.aspx

Regards

Patrick

Patrick Herlihy

Partner Technical Specialist - Business Productivity

Microsoft Ireland - SMS&P

Tel: +353 1 7063505

Mobile: +353 872676024

Email: patherl@microsoft.com

Feedback on Irish Partner event

2008-09-22T13:55:26Z

Thanks to all of you who took the time to visit us in Microsoft for the Irish Partner Event last week. We would be delighted to get your feedback on the event and for you to let us know what we can add to future agendas for these events. Please click on 'Comment' below to leave your feedback!

Back to School!

2008-08-26T19:38:46Z

September training events are now live – pick from SharePoint, Hyper-V, Exchange and more. Courses take place in Belfast, Cork and Dublin.

Welcome!

2008-08-26T15:11:15Z

You are very welcome to the Microsoft Irish Partner blog.

This is a platform for discussion, debate and information about Irish partners.

You will shortly be receiving the first issue of Irish Partner News - if you haven’t subscribed as yet, you can do so now at this link.

This month also sees the launch of the International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners (IAMCP), which will encourage partners to work together to create business opportunities through networking and relationship building with Microsoft Ireland. A few partners are already championing the association so get involved today!

We would like to get your feedback on these new initiatives and anything else you would like to see covered here, so please get in touch by emailing i-murmol@microsoft.com

Muriel

Irish Partner Team