Wet String and Sellotape : Search, High Performance Computing

New Microsoft Action Pack - details here!

Mike P — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:44:38 GMT

24,000 of our 34,000 Registered Partners currently subscribe to Action Pack, our quarterly toolkits of software and sales and marketing materials. These are created to help our partners stay competitive, meet their sales goals and grow their business. So what is in the new action pack?

New Rules and how you get it:

To enhance the value of Action Pack, from March 1^st, all of those renewing their subscription must take a course and pass an assessment to renew. Partners must take one specific Microsoft online course from the required Partner Learning Centre course list and complete its associated assessment with a minimum score of 70 per cent. To continue receiving Action Pack, partners must pass an assessment every two years. Courses are all 100% subsidised and take no more than 60 minutes. The assessments will take no more than 30 minutes to complete.

If this might be of interest to your readers, in your blog posting would it be possible to highlight the following:

1. All information regarding the Microsoft Action Pack resides at: www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/actionpack

2. We have made available to partners a enrolment and re-enrolment guide from: www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/actionpack

3. If partners have a query regarding their Action Pack subscription, they should call: 0870 60 70 700 (press option 1)

Enjoy!

WWPC Content get all your slide decks from here!

Mike P — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 11:49:45 GMT

So you may have noticed a slight absence from me over the last few weeks whilst I have been at the Worldwide Partner Conference at which we had a significant attendance from UK Partners in HPC and 400 others from the UK. I followed that up with the Microsoft Global Briefing we hold for our staff each year - both great events with lots of content which will find it's way here over the coming weeks as stories become actionable locally.

If you want to get your hands on the slides from the Worldwide Partner Conference then you just have to look here:

http://members.microsoft.com/partner/digitalwpc/

Check out the great slides from Ballmer, Kevin Turner and some of the cool Enterprise Search decks up there from yours truly :-)

Enjoy!

HPC Partner TV Video - 1st for the HPC Team in Redmond... :-)

Mike P — Thu, 31 May 2007 12:13:00 GMT

So for a little while now I have been meaning to grab a few of the HPC stars and let you all see the people who make HPC happen in EMEA and Worldwide. This is the first of 2 videos initially to show you the stars behind the WCCS show!

Mike Pallot sat down with Travis Hatmaker, Worldwide SI Channel Development Lead and Bjorn Tromsdorf who is the EMEA HPC Product and Solution Manager to talk about what High Performance Computing is and why our partners should be interested in Compute Cluster Server.

Partner TV: Microsoft's High Performance Computing

Watch out for more to follow - there is another great one with Ryan Waite and Jeff Wierer to follow!

Worldwide Partner Conference Registration Opens!

Mike P — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:30:37 GMT

So for those of you who were in Minneapolis last year you will know how amazing the Microsoft Partner Conference can be, this year we are doing it all again in Denver! Instead of banging on about how good it was I thought I would give you an insight on why I think the partner conference is good and what I get out of it:

Motivation - A huge motivation boost seeing and hearing the experience of partners working with our technologies from all geographies worldwide

Insight - Fantastic insight to the new technologies coming out over the next few years

Networking - a great time to meet those people you haven't been able to connect with all year or those people you have worked with remotely (product groups for example) but not been able to actually meet

Fun - the sense of community and the fact the UK party is always remarked as one of the best each year (which is why the MS global Execs come along)

So how could this help your business in practical terms:

Develop new offerings on new technologies that provide opportunity for your business
Develop relationships with other businesses to help you grow in your competence areas
Share experiences with the people who write the code or manage the businesses on a worldwide or country level

To register just click here and if you do attend make sure you come to my session on Enterprise Search with references on how to work with MS HQ, the field and the partner perspective!

Look forward to seeing you there!

Excel Services for Dummies...!

Mike P — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 18:04:21 GMT

Been looking for this for a while now, how good are we at documents on how to take your XFN scripts and play with your XML heebeegeebeees....well yes actually rather good. So I liked this site because it's simple:

Why doesn't more of our stuff start off with a nice 'Basics' overview - great to see the office team setting the standard. Check it out if you want to see the basics on Excel Services.

Enjoy!

Intel Servers that sapp less juice...

Mike P — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 15:54:00 GMT

Finding the energy performance of your servers gets you down, let alone costs you an arm and a leg, Intel may just have the answer?

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070312/20070312005400.html?.v=1
Press Release
Source: Intel Corporation
Intel Marks Energy-Efficient Milestone with 50-Watt, High-Performing Quad-Core Server Processors
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Further expanding its quad-core processor family line-up, Intel Corporation today announced two energy-efficient 50-watt server processors that represent a 35- to nearly 60-percent decrease in power from Intel's existing 80- and 120-watt quad-core server products.

Very interesting for HPC and Search server farms...huge implications for businesses in high density areas with energy capacity challenges!

Looking to partner with Microsoft....simple tips on how to be successful...

Mike P — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 21:41:00 GMT

Okay, so if I was given a penny for every time I was asked:

How do I prove my value to Microsoft?

What should I do to get more visibility inside of Microsoft?

What should I do to get more face time from MSFT?

...then I would be a very rich man indeed...sadly this is not true and I impart these small words of wisdom freely (see how nice I am :-))

So here it is the top secrets to working with Microsoft (there are books on the matter just in case these few bullets whet your appetite):

To demonstrate your value sell your platform into specific verticals
The revenue they see as a result will demonstrate your value as a partner
The stories you create will demonstrate your business value and give you the PR legs to take your platform further

Many partners look for credibility from Microsoft. The way to demonstrate this is to deliver the following:

Predictability - 'revenue on the platform'
Proof Points - 'stories of how your product helps ours'
Pipeline - 'how we can take the initial stories further'

I have shared these with different alliance managers in the past working now in companies from Orange to O2 and many other types of partners. There are no complex rules and calling higher up usually doesn't work. It's nice and simple - help us to succeed and we will help you.

Enjoy!

Quick apology...

Mike P — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 20:11:00 GMT

Righty ho, so not being the most technical person in the world I have been trying out a few different blog writers/posting apps to varying success. My favorite was Live Writer until I realised that it does sometimes cut off URLs hence the apology to you all for some frustrating posts where you cannot follow my links!

This should all be over now as the boys and girls in Redmond have let me try out some funky new version of LiveWriter which totally and utterly hums! Thanks to Joe Cheng and the gang in Redmond for helping me look less stupid (tough I know).

Normal service is now resumed ;-)

Get help about the Microsoft Partner Programme direct from Instant Messenger - check out the PartnerBot today!

Mike P — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 14:18:57 GMT

Righty ho so many of you will know that we arent often happy with ourselves in Microsoft and are fairly remorseless at trying to improve what we do. Well check out this very cool addition to the suport we give our partners a Partner bot!

Now bear with me 'cos I was healthily sceptical but check out how good it is. Below an example of a simple request for 'What is HPC?' - immediately it gives me the relevant page to go to to get more info around hpc - cool!

Want to get this help from wherever you are in the world at any time - then add Partner Bot to your IM list - partnerbot@hotmail.com

This is very early in development but it does help hence the post today - if you see some of the things we are missing then just ping me a mail and I will ask Madeleine to add them to the information stores!

Enjoy!

Scottish Innovation at it's best....so inspiring to spend some time in Glasgow and Edinburgh...learnings we can take from Google to bespoke system builders to new business start ups!

Mike P — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 22:48:00 GMT

Right so get yourself a digestive biccie and a nice cup of cocoa as I wax lyrical on some time in the Lowlands of Scotland. For those of you from an international bent, this is where I was for the last few days:

http://maps.live.com/?q=edinburgh&mkt=en-gb&FORM=L...

Both myself and the product manager for HPC were up speaking with 6 or 7 partners all working around the topics of HPC and one a last minute addition around Search. Some of the things that struck out at me were the following:

The Innovation in the Scottish market and the support from the government offered for technology businesses - http://www.icass.co.uk/fundinginnovationspur.html
The tremendous business experience in the region - lots of entrepreneurs who have been in Silicon Valley and returned to Silicon Fen with the same spirit for technology and changing the norms of social interaction (reminded me of our own Blue Monster crusade inside of Microsoft Blue Monster)
I won’t bore you about all the businesses and people we saw but leave you with one personal meaningful experience of a partner who told me about his friend who is currently suffering from Leukaemia and using technology to share with the world his story, you can read about Douglas' gritty story here: http://www.paynehq.com (NB: not for those who are easily offended) Some goodies will be on their way Douglas and best of luck from me

Fantastic few days, great experience and great people - best of luck to you all. Now I know some of you will be saying what was the learning from Google - well, I will share that with you when I and we have completed our discussions – wouldn’t want to go off half cocked now would I :-)

Thanks to James and Rayo in the Scottish Office for all your help!

Enjoy!

Off on hols - be back at the end of Jan...excuse the radio silence!

Mike P — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 09:30:00 GMT

Just a quick note to say I am off on hols and will be back at the end of Jan..

Got plenty to discuss - if you are heading through Heathrow and are off to Hong Kong or Dubai then check out the new digital passport trial - seriously cool, guess who is number 290ish on the list :-)

You can read more about it here: www.misense.org

Enjoy!

Great news for Microsoft Action Pack subscribers - product list for Jan 10th Action pack...!

Mike P — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 21:49:44 GMT

Quick post - we have just got news of the set of goodies in the Action Pack coming out on January 10th, this includes:

• 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

Great news for all you registered partners who want to start playing with the technology and seeing how it can benefit your customers!

Port 25 v2 Upgrade - Live!

Mike P — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 14:43:00 GMT

Kudos to the Port25 team who have redesigned their site so it's far more imaginative, easier to read and interact with. Check it out for yourself here: http://port25.technet.com/

For those new to Port25 this is the place where Microsoft puts all it's content we learn from our OpenSource labs we have in Redmond.

Enjoy!

Calling all Search and HPC ISVs....more $$$ on Microsoft platform!

Mike P — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 21:19:00 GMT

Well I have to say it is great to be back!....well kind of, have to say I will miss the pool and evening Rioja!

One of my colleagues James sent this to me whilst i was away...some really interesting articles around how Microsoft Platform ISVs make more $$$:

Microsoft Wants More From Its ISV Channel for Windows Vista

Channel Insider - October 24, 2006

Less than 3 percent of Microsoft ISVs are driving 80 percent of revenue.

Microsoft ISVs Outperforming Peers

Channel Insider - October 24, 2006

Program benefits and channel behavior have Microsoft ISVs outperforming peers, even those building on Microsoft but outside the program, according to an IDC report.

Always worth a browse..

Cheers

Warning change of blog - single blogs now for HPC and Search - change your RSS feeds accordingly :-)

Mike P — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 21:31:00 GMT

Right so based on your feedback I have decided to change this blog so that we have two separate blogs for those looking for specific Search content versus HPC. The blog links will be as follows:

Search Blog:

http://blogs.technet.com/mikep/default.aspx

HPC Blog:

http://blogs.technet.com/mike_p/default.aspx

Thanks for the feedback and I hope you enjoy the change. Please note the HPC blog is currently bare as it's brand spanking new for content...stay tuned this week...!