Wet String and Sellotape : Opinion Piece

So why: 'Wet String and Sellotape'...?

Mike P — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:12:02 GMT

So it's probably worth a post to enlighten a few of you on the new title I have decided upon for this blog. There have been a few people who have impacted me whilst I have been working in the IT Industry and I love hearing new phrases that different people use around the world to really simply explain what they like, love and enthuse about. Most of these can be fantastic passive interrupts to help you to steer meetings on track and or help people to stay to the point. These are some of the phrases that still ring in my head and I try to keep on remembering when talking to partners and customers about what we do:

'Mike I don't care if it's wet string and sellotape as long as I can make money from it and or it saves me money elsewhere!'

So the big learning is really very very simple but how many times do we hear presentations or meetings that place all the emphasis on the 'what' and less on the impact or value?

Other great phrases that have stayed with me include:

'I need to know it's like selling £5 notes for 50p'

'We were born with two ears and one mouth lad remember that!'

'Have you ever been asked to do a comedy show on TV? ....no...that might be because your jokes aren't really that funny'

So what can you expect going forward from this blog. Well it will be straight talking, have more of a global outlook as I head on my travels, so far in the diary I have Canada, Wastern Europe, Central and Eastern Europe and of course Seattle when I finally arrive!

I hope you enjoy my musings!

Moving on...

Mike P — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:53:45 GMT

For a number of years now I have had the huge opportunity of working with a very talented bunch of folks in Microsoft UK and the UK technology market. Whether it was in my early days in Microsoft UK in the Enterprise customer space or later on in the Small and Medium Partner world I have had a fantastic time helping partners to drive more business from the days of the XP launch and the first version of SharePoint to the heady times of Security, High Performance Computing and Enterprise Search.

Over the last four years I have worked with partners who are new to Microsoft and have helped them to build successful practices on Microsoft technology. I have now been given the opportunity lead the team worldwide and will be relocating to Redmond next week to work in the Worldwide Partner Group. It's often a cliche to say 'it is with mixed emotions that...bla bla bla' but I have to say I am sad to be leaving the UK and hugely excited to be heading off to pastures new. I am not a huge fan of leaving do's and so will be slipping out the door quietly.

This does of course mean that my insight into the Enterprise Search and HPC spaces will be dwindling as I wont have the luxury of working on those areas full time. I am therefore going to change the blog so that it becomes a discussion area for technology evangelism and how that impacts our partners and customers.

I hope you have enjoyed the show and I look forward to working with you all in the future!

Offtopic - love cars?

Mike P — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:11:51 GMT

Love cars?

Check out this blog: http://jalopnik.com/

Just fab!

The Future of Web Search

Mike P — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:16:57 GMT

A very simple post here, amazing work from the Microsoft Live Labs team - simple and really cool graphics using Silverlight. I love the following:

The Halo skin (okay so I am a sucker!)
The graphics around the different types of content search
The accuracy and speed

Try it out for yourself, I suspect this is all powered from the same www.live.com search that is hugely revamped over the last few days - check out the mapping functionality which is such a huge step change on where we and the market have been, below a sample query:

Nice work :-)

Solid work ethics and the big picture - don't confuse the two...

Mike P — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:48:57 GMT

Hmmm ever felt that someone is putting their heart and soul into something but don't quite see the big picture?

Made me smile, thanks to Jon at TBS for sending through!

My favourite books...

Mike P — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 14:49:48 GMT

Thought I would share my favourite books with you all:

Social Intelligence - Daniel Goleman
How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
Fish! - Stephen C. Lundin
The Art of War - Sun Tzu
Good to Great - Jim Collins

All well worth a read and fantastic books!

Enjoy!

Top Stuff I have seen recently..

Mike P — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 13:16:00 GMT

Made me smile:

How to tell if your boss is nuts: saw this from the brilliant Execupundit blog: http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/bing/0706/quiz.crazybosses.fortune/index.html

Think I might be lucky having read some of those weirdo options to tick!

Human 2.0: Windows Compute Human Server...early product team discussions..

Mike P — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:45:00 GMT

So as you will have seen last week and will see again tomorrow we have been out and about with the Partner TV video camera taking shots from the product teams when we manage to catch them!

Here is a fascinating video clip of some early work we have planned - all around making Human 2.0: The example used is my boss Steve Clayton - huge thanks go to Ryan Waite for this amazing product insight:

Enjoy!

Microsoft Surface: Coolest piece of Microsoft Technology for a decade?

Mike P — Wed, 30 May 2007 18:36:00 GMT

Click on the picture above and enjoy....least said the better....seriously cool technology with amazing potential....think I need a new dining able... :)

Is Google Enterprise Search a joke?

Mike P — Mon, 21 May 2007 12:36:22 GMT

Well that was the title of a recent ZDNet article - and there was one question in particular that Donna asked which caught my eye:

How Google will specifically be able to significantly grow Google Enterprise revenues, given the core products have 1) low price points and 2) no services income stream?

The reason this caught my eye is the manner in which they, Google, will foster an ecosystem? So what does that mean - well - how are they helping partners to grow businesses from their software and add value to customers on top of this software? The easiest place to start here is to ask the question of ourselves. How would you do this with MOSS 07 and where would partners go to generate there own wealth? Just selling another company's software is one thing but adding value on top of the platform is quite another. By innovating on top of the platform you generate value for customers and the vendor themselves - the outcome of that is complete synchrony between customer opportunities and application of resources to deliver solutions focusing on the customer. Without this opportunity for the partners and broad channel you simply wont be able to generate the value for partners to take your products into the market and deliver the value and solutions to the customers. In other words your channel strategy will fail.

For me that is why Google Enterprise Search could well be perceived as a joke - not because of the software per se but the manner in which one size has to fit all and the lack of attention paid to taking the products to market and the tremendous value the channel provides. In the Microsoft world the Microsoft Enterprise Search platform delivers a rich set of opportunities for partners. The key is to remember that not all customers want exactly the same experience and whilst this makes the role of the software manufacturer very tough - this makes the role of the channel key. Success lies with the organisation that not only makes the best software platform but also the best manner in which to engage and interact with partners to allow them to be an extension of the software vendors sales force - not only technically but also commercially.

In essence you cannot do it alone and to think so is misguided, this is why Microsoft place so much emphasis on our channel initiatives and programmes.

Enjoy!

High Productivity Computing...Linux and Microsoft??

Mike P — Wed, 09 May 2007 11:05:22 GMT

It's all just about doing things easier isn't it?

In many of my external meetings I meet partners and customers who say things like the following:

I want to focus on our business more
I want it to just work
Why does it not recognise this widget?
We have to make this more simple for people to understand in order to grow the market!

It all reminds me of the comments from Dr Simon Cox in his whitepaper on High Productivity Computing. All great stuff - then I saw this post from Chris Parkes writing about the differences in UI and simplicity between Open Office and Microsoft Office 2007. Hmmm now who is the greater target audience the technically astute or the gang of people who just want to get their job done?

Just a few thoughts...

Rumourmill...Microsoft to buy Yahoo?

Mike P — Fri, 04 May 2007 19:47:03 GMT

Seen some press reports about Microsoft potentially buying Yahoo..

BBC

Yahoo shares up on Microsoft talk
Associated Press:

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.aspx?Feed=AP&Date=20070504&ID=6846679&Symbol=YHOO

Reuters article:

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.aspx?Feed=OBR&Date=20070504&ID=6846019&Symbol=YHOO

Scoble has seen it and posted here: MSFT to YHOO? , as he says loads starting to get blogged out there.... now I wonder...!

Curiouser and curiouser..... :-)

CCS and MSFT Share price...!

Mike P — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:51:04 GMT

So whilst we run the first user group for CCS at Microsoft, look what happens to the MSFT share price!

Made me smile!

So what is the Live Maps response...

Mike P — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 20:59:31 GMT

So I guess I thought I would check what Live Maps did and happily here's the result:

http://maps.live.com/?q=london%20to%20san%20francisco&mkt=en-GB&FORM=BDRE

Phew!

London to San Fran with Google maps...

Mike P — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 20:54:03 GMT

This made me smile, doubtless there are similar 2.0 errors in Live Maps:

http://tinyurl.com/2yqwz5

Step 37 is a cracker:

Lol :-)