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Infrastructure complexity and fierce competition from value-added resellers (VARs), original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and other vendors can make it increasingly difficult for you to differentiate your offerings and protect margins. At the same time, your customers face the challenge of managing PC infrastructure costs while boosting employee productivity, system reliability, and information security.

Windows Partner Solutions were designed specifically to address your needs and those of your midsize-business customers, while saving time and money. These solutions encompass new, innovative technologies—the Windows Vista Enterprise operating system and the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP)—available only through Microsoft Volume Licensing. And allow you to add services to meet customer’s unique needs and widen your revenue stream.

There are two flavours of Windows Partner Solutions available; Microsoft Optimized Desktop Essentials & Microsoft Managed Optimized Desktop

In this post I'm going to look at some of the tangible customer benefits that they can expect from Microsoft Optimized Desktop Essentials and the associated Partner benefits.

Microsoft Optimized Desktop Essentials

Here are the savings that your customer can expect:

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MDOP frees up IT generalists’ time by minimizing testing time, reducing support calls and making it easier to repair downed PCs. Coupled with Software Assurance’s valuable training benefits for IT staff, these benefits are estimated to be worth up to US$60 per PC annually.
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Improve end-user productivity.

MDOP makes users more productive by reducing PC downtime and helping computers get back up and running more quickly. That translates into up to US$20 per PC of increased end-user productivity each year.

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Protect business information.

Windows BitLocker™ Drive Encryption turns a stolen hard drive into a brick, helping protect your customer’s business information. It can save them a significant amount in potential damages should they lose even a single laptop. For an average midsize business, those damages could cost the equivalent of US$50 per PC per year.

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Estimated annual value for an example customer.

The benefits outlined above are incremental
to the significant TCO and user productivity benefits a customer would receive by deploying
Windows Vista.

Here are the benefits the partner can expect:

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Earn margin on additional software sales.

A typical VAR could earn US$9 in profit by adding Windows Software Assurance and MDOP to a sale (assuming a combined 5 percent sales margin from mark-up and any rebates or incentives you might receive).

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Reduce implementation costs.

With SoftGrid Application Virtualization, you don’t need to install applications for them to run, so you can maintain a single system image and easily customize it with different  applications for individual customers. Reducing the number of OS images can save close to US$2 per PC annually in testing costs.

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Sell additional follow-on services.

You can easily develop application virtualization skills and experience and help your customers deploy new applications and updates more efficiently. Assuming just one project per customer per year, this service could earn you US$15 per PC in revenue.

image Estimated potential return for an example VAR over three years.

For more information, be sure to check out these resources:

Optimized Desktop Essentials Overview Brochure
Optimized Desktop Essentials White Paper

Learn more here:

Windows Partner Solutions Online Training
Windows Partner Solutions Training Incentives
Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack
Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization
Microsoft Asset Inventory Service
Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management
Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset